Kochi: A single mother from Thrissur, who adopted a nine-year-old girl from Delhi in 2021, has approached the Kerala high court seeking to annul the adoption and surrender the child to the child welfare committee (CWC), citing the child's abnormal behaviour and frequent fits of rage over trivial matters.

The petitioner, an unmarried woman, stated in her plea that the child is studying in Class 7. 

She said the girl started showing behavioural issues soon after she was brought home upon completing the adoption process.Over time, the petitioner said, the child's abnormal behaviour and anger intensified. 

She allegedly began stealing money from the petitioner's purse and others, using abusive language and behaving aggressively.

The petitioner further stated that in 2023, she received an email from the district child protection unit in Delhi directing her to produce the child before the court, as the girl was a rape victim. 

Chennai: Madras high court on Tuesday refused any relief to a transwoman who wanted to legally adopt a child. The court held that Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 does not provide for legal adoption by a transgender person.For a transgender person to legally adopt a child, the regulation must be amended to include such persons as eligible for adoption, Justice M Dhandapani said. "Unless a writ of mandamus is moved against Union govt seeking to make an appropriate amendment in the Act, the relief sought cannot be granted," the court said.

The court then granted liberty to transwoman K Prithika Yashini, the first transperson appointed sub-inspector of police in TN, to approach Centre seeking an appropriate amendment to the Act enabling a transperson to adopt a child. According to the petitioner, in 2016, she moved the HC since her application for the post of sub-inspector was rejected. With a favourable order from the HC, she was appointed as a sub-inspector and is presently working as an assistant immigration officer.

In 2021, she decided to adopt a child and approached Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA). On Sept 22, 2022, the authority rejected her application on the grounds that she cannot legally adopt a child since she is a transgender person. Aggrieved, she moved the present petition challenging the order of CARA. She contended that the rejection of her application amounts to discrimination and infringement of her rights as a transgender person.tnn

The Victim Rights Centre (VRC) of the Kerala State Legal Services Authority (KeLSA) has submitted comprehensive suggestions before the Kerala High Court for the betterment of adoption and foster care system.The report was submitted by Adv. Parvathi Menon A., Project Co-ordinator of VRC after she was suo motu impleaded by Justice Sobha Annamma Eapen in a writ petition filed by an adoptive...

The Andhra Pradesh government has suspended Anantapur District Women and Child Welfare and Empowerment Officer, M. Nagamani, for negligence resulting in the death of an infant at the Specialised Adoption Agency (SAA).

The Andhra Pradesh government has suspended Anantapur District Women and Child Welfare and Empowerment Officer, M. Nagamani, for negligence resulting in the death of an infant at the Specialised Adoption Agency (SAA).

The Department for Women and Children on Tuesday issued an order, suspending Nagamani and ordering disciplinary action against her.

The Government Order (GO) said that two-month-old Niroop died on October 3 but there was no immediate intimation on the hospitalisation and death of the child by District Women and Child Welfare and Empowerment Officer.

The death was reported lately after newspapers published the news.

Synopsis

The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) has constituted a medical grievance committee to address recurring complaints about the health status of children given for adoption. This three-member panel will review grievances from adoptive parents and stakeholders, study data, and propose policy interventions to streamline the system within its one-month tenure, submitting recommendations to the CARA CEO.

The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) has constituted a medical grievance committee to examine recurring complaints related to the health status of children given for adoption and suggest policy interventions.

The committee, approved by the member secretary and CEO of CARA, will review medical grievances raised by adoptive and prospective adoptive parents as well as other stakeholders and recommend measures to streamline the system, according to an official memorandum.

The three-member panel will include the deputy director (policy division), deputy director (grievance), and deputy director (in-country division).The assistant director concerned, either from the in-country or inter-country division, will assist the committee during its meetings.

The tenure of the committee will be one month, during which it will examine categories of medical grievances and propose next steps, the memorandum said.

Sweden's international
adoption activities
− lessons learned and the way forward

Volume 1

Sweden's international
adoption activities
− lessons learned and the way forward

Volume 2

“The connection with our roots will always stay, even if we are miles away”

I know there are thousands of adoptees who are out there. Looking for a part of their identity. Looking for answers. Looking for family. Looking for information. From my personally experience I understand that this search journey can be very emotional.

And the thing that hits the most is that often questions are replied by more questions. Not always necessarily by answers. Which in my opinion can be very frustrating. In my case, I have been searching for 40 years to find out from which region in India I was coming.

Only after 40 years I got my answers. I can’t describe the peace of mind this has given me. That is why I understand why it can be such a hustle, the searching, the waiting. And therefore I am happy to share my own personal story.

I hope you will also be able to find the answers you are looking for and I hope you’ll be able to find happiness in your life.

Mary Rhedin, an Indian adoptee from Sweden, in her book ‘Mitt Vita Liv’, which translates to My White Life, writes about her life with whites and the discrimination she had to face

CHENNAI: Mary was one-year-old when she was adopted from India and taken to Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1973. The memories of her initial days in Sweden are hazy, but she remembers her parents telling her that she was a difficult child. Her white mother’s blonde hair and blue eyes never appealed to young Mary, and her immediate response to seeing her near her was fear, which grew as aversion. Mary says, “I was longing for my mother. I was screaming all the time, I was terrified. I would dream about my biological parents, especially my mother.” Tormented by estrangement at a very nascent phase of childhood and growing up in an unpleasant environment, aloof from her native, she had a very lonely life.

This adoptee in Sweden grew up hearing that her mother had died during child birth, her grandmother was unfit to take care of her, and thus she was adopted. A compelling truth as it sounds, and it became her reality. But as she grew older, her reality was upended when people started saying that she did not look like her white parents. She says, “People would ask me where I am from and say that I did not look like them.” Her adoptive mother’s thoughtless comments about her brown skin bespoke her ignorance and little knowledge on various skin colours, but were excruciating memories for her. They were reminders ingrained in the mind of the little girl that she did not belong in Sweden. They grew like monsters in her head.

Left hanging between two countries: with biological roots in India and her cultural baggage entrenched in Sweden, the now 52-year-old Mary Rhedin scrambled to lead a peaceful life in an adopted country, amid discreet racism.

Coping mechanism

Many birth mothers hope to maintain contact with their child. But their agreements with adoptive parents can be fragile.

By Nicole Chung

When I was born, my Korean parents, immigrants to the United States, relinquished me for adoption. At the age of two and a half months, I was placed with a white family who lived in a small town in Oregon. This was the early 1980s, and mine was a closed adoption, which meant that growing up, I had no contact with my birth parents. I didn’t know their names or their circumstances. I didn’t know why they had chosen not to keep me. I was curious and confused about my history, but my adoptive parents couldn’t fill in the gaps, because they knew so little themselves.

When I was in my 20s, I decided to search for more information about my birth family. This required that I pay hundreds of dollars to an intermediary, who petitioned a Washington State court to unseal my adoption records. She couldn’t share my birth parents’ names or contact information with me until she found them and gained their consent. Throughout the process, which dragged on for months, I thought about how things might have been different had I grown up in an open adoption, one in which I might have known more about my birth family and perhaps retained contact with them. I wouldn’t have had to wait decades, and I wouldn’t have had to shoulder the financial cost of a search, to understand where—and whom—I came from.

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