Meet Aria Krishnamurti, a woman whose life story embodies resilience, curiosity, and compassion. From the moment she learned of her adoption at age 10, Aria embarked on a quest to uncover her roots.

Meet Aria Krishnamurti, a woman whose life story embodies resilience, curiosity, and compassion. From the moment she learned of her adoption at age 10, Aria embarked on a quest to uncover her roots, driven by a deep-seated desire to understand her past. Talking to SheThePeople, Aria Krishnamurti shared how, through this experience, she found closure and a renewed sense of purpose, dedicating herself to supporting others in need.

Today, she serves as a beacon of hope, using her platform to advocate for mental health, fashion, and lifestyle while inspiring others to embrace their own journeys of self-discovery and compassion. Here's  her story in her own words.

From Finding Roots To Spreading Love In Orphanage

"I was 10 when my parents told me that I was adopted. My birth mother died after I was born, and nobody knew who my father was. Initially, I took this information lightly, even joking with my sister, 'You came from mom's belly, but I came from her heart, so they love me more!'



As I grew older, I became curious about my biological parents. I wanted to know everything about them. Why did they leave me? My parents were more than willing to help me discover my roots. I discovered that after my mother died, the hospital wrapped me in a cloth and placed me outside a police station until someone took me to an orphanage. My mother used to volunteer there and adopted me when I was just one month old. I am so grateful that she did. But with passing years, my frustration built up, and I would vent in various ways because I was angry about not knowing where I was from. One day, I decided to go and look for the orphanage to see if it was still open. I took my househelp, didn't inform my parents, and went to the police station. None of the former police worked anymore, and they refused to help look for such insignificant information. So I decided to search for the orphanage myself. After searching, I found it.



Everything seemed eerily familiar as soon as I entered: I was waiting at the reception when an elderly lady entered. I showed her some of my old images, and she instantly recognised me. She'd brought me there as a baby. I couldn't believe it—we hugged passionately, and there was crying and an instant connection between us. She asked me about my current life situation as well as what I was doing.



That day, my life changed dramatically. It felt like I was in a Karan Johar movie. I returned home, confessed everything to my mother, and started crying. My prolonged search for my biological parents stopped, as did my self-pity and need for approval. Today, I am 30 years old, and I've been visiting the orphanage on a regular basis for the past five years.



Whenever I see a child being admitted to the orphanage, I just wish they find a kind and loving family just like mine and get to live a life full of joy and love."

Indore: A visually impaired girl in Indore was adopted by an American couple under Juvenile Justice Act. The adoption process was facilitated by Sanjeevani Seva Sangam institution, the woman and child development officials said. The girl, completely blind, received her passport and left for the US with her new family on Thursday, WCD district programme officer Ramniwas Budholiya said.

“A visually-impaired girl with special needs, who was residing in an institution in Indore, has found a loving embrace in the arms of her American couple that has adopted her,” he said adding that the couple, living in the United States, had applied for adoption under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 and its 2021 amendment act.

“The Sanjeevani Seva Sangam institution in Indore facilitated the inter-country adoption of the girl, who is completely blind,” he said, adding that the girl has been handed over to the couple in accordance with the adoption order issued by the Indore Collector on February 1, 2024. Following the order, the institution assisted in obtaining the girl's birth certificate from the Municipal Corporation to apply for her passport.

“After receiving the passport, the parents arrived at the institution on March 13, 2024, to take the girl with them to the US,” he said, adding that he along with Asha Singh, the director of Sanjeevani Seva Sangam were present to witness the emotional reunion between the happy family and 2.5-years-old girl, who was found abandoned in other district before she was provided shelter and complete care in the Indore-based hostel. The couple expressed immense joy, and the girl seemed happy to be with them, the senior WCD official said, adding that the couple had applied through Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), where details including physical and mental health of all the legal-free children, who can be adopted, are available.

“The US couple, who already have three children, are assured of providing best care to the girl while we also have a mechanism for regular monitoring of the children, who are adopted through CARA,” he said. TNN

Herontwerp stelsel
interlandelijke adoptie
Verkenning publiekrechtelijk stelsel

While the CID claims it is still investigating matters, affected families hold on to hope and several of the accused – said to have political connections – are out on bail.

Jalpaiguri: It has been over eight years since Kajal Basfor last saw her son, Ganesh. In 2016, Ganesh ran away after facing his mother’s scolding and a beating. As per the Child Helpline record, he was found at New Jalpaiguri Station in North Bengal, following which the police took him to a temporary shelter.

Kajal came to Jalpaiguri hoping for a reunion, but was instead locked up at a shelter home called Ashraya. Her three-year-old daughter Dipali was forcefully taken away to another shelter home, Bimala Shishu Griha. While Kajal was released after a few days, Dipali was held captive at the home.

Seeking help, Kajal and her husband approached the Jalpaiguri Child Welfare Centre and the district collector. The Child Welfare Centre clarified that two members of the Child Welfare Committee, seeing Kajal’s emotional state, deemed her unfit to raise a child, leading to their separation.

Kajal finally got to reunite with her daughter after a few months, but the search for Ganesh is still on. “They returned my daughter as she looks a lot like me. I heard that my son is living at a home, but I am yet to meet him,” said Kajal, who lives in Birpara, around 63 km from Jalpaiguri town in West Bengal.

The Mandate Secretary of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Women Affairs Secretariat, Mrs Adedayo Benjamins-Laniyi,  disclosed recently, that  the FCT Administration had sealed off an orphanage in Karonmajigi, the Priesthood Orphanage, after 23 children, aged 1 – 14 years, allegedly trafficked from Plateau state were supposedly rescued from the orphanage.

She also added that the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, had authorised the Secretariat to profile and recertify orphanages operating within the nation’s capital.

But, this case is not an isolated one as issues of orphan abuses in orphanage homes have become a recurring decimal in the nation’s polity.

Before this development, we recall that in 2017, the FCTA had  also clamped down on illegal orphanages operating in the city over alleged negligence and other nefarious acts.

The Mandate Secretary of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Women Affairs Secretariat, Mrs Adedayo Benjamins-Laniyi,  disclosed recently, that  the FCT Administration had sealed off an orphanage in Karonmajigi, the Priesthood Orphanage, after 23 children, aged 1 – 14 years, allegedly trafficked from Plateau state were supposedly rescued from the orphanage.

She also added that the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, had authorised the Secretariat to profile and recertify orphanages operating within the nation’s capital.

But, this case is not an isolated one as issues of orphan abuses in orphanage homes have become a recurring decimal in the nation’s polity.

Before this development, we recall that in 2017, the FCTA had  also clamped down on illegal orphanages operating in the city over alleged negligence and other nefarious acts.

Many adopted children, youth and adults need help now!

Children, young people over 18 and adult adoptees have so far been able to get help via the PAS scheme at the Appeals Board. 

In recent months, the demand for PAS courses has been enormous. In 2023, over 600 PAS courses were completed, and the demand this year is still increasing, which can be attributed to the much mention of the adoption area in recent times.

Everyone agrees that it is very important that we support the adopted at a time when their identity is being questioned. Therefore, it also comes as a very big surprise to us that they do not have control over the funding for this very important PAS work.

No adoptee should be left alone and without the possibility of help.

Taipei, March 13 (CNA) The Ministry of Health and Welfare on Wednesday said it had ordered a child welfare foundation to temporarily stop accepting new adoption cases after a 1-year-old boy it placed in foster care died after allegedly being abused by his caregiver.

In addition to halting new adoptions, the existing adoption cases being handled by the organization, the Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF), will also be subject to increased supervision by local governments, the ministry said.

Speaking at a press conference, Deputy Health Minister Lee Li-feng (李麗芬) said her ministry was planning to meet Friday with a group of experts, the Taipei and New Taipei city governments, and the CWLF, which will submit a review report on the incident.

A decision will be made at a later date whether or not to allow the group to resume taking new adoption cases, Lee said.

Including the CWLF, there are currently eight organizations in Taiwan involved in facilitating adoptions. Nationwide, 468 children are awaiting adoption, including around 200 aged three and under, Lee said.

In 1979, China introduced a law that stated that families could only have one child. The policy was introduced in a draconian attempt to fight poverty and control the population. Unfortunately, this meant many children were abandoned. When Kati Pohler's parents became pregnant with a second child, they knew that they could not keep her. They left her on a bridge with a note saying that in 10 or 20 years' time, for her to come to find them. This is how it all unfolded. 

Meet Me On The Bridge

Originally from China, Kati Pohler grew up in Michigan under the loving care of her adoptive family. Her biological parents Qian Fenxiang and Xu Lida, however, still live in China with Kati's biological older sister. At the time when Kati was born, China still had its now abolished one-child policy. A couple who got pregnant a second time would either face forced abortion or heavy financial penalties if caught otherwise. (1)

Her parents kept the pregnancy a secret because they did not want to abort the child. Still, they knew that they could not keep her. Kati's biological mom gave birth to her on a houseboat, hidden away from the eyes of any doctors or authorities who would have to report them. Next, Qian and Xu took Kati to a covered vegetable market and left her there with a hand-written note.

"Our daughter, Jingzhi, was born at 10am on the 24th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, 1995. We have been forced by poverty and affairs of the world to abandon her. Oh, pity the hearts of fathers and mothers far and near!

Balmaceda, head of the investigation into irregular adoptions. In charge of this file for 5 years, the judge has 1,100 international adoption files to process, covering the period 1970 – 1999. To date, 650 files have been analyzed. The judge declared: “during the five years of investigation, I have not succeeded in establishing the commission of a crime”. 

This partial assessment may seem surprising if we consider the circumstances in which international adoption of Chilean children developed. The dictatorship of General Pinochet (1973 -1990) is known for having resorted to forced disappearances of political opponents and discrimination against indigenous minorities. The government, aware of its “image deficit” internationally, and considering the number of “orphan” children, opened the country to international adoption, thus hoping to give the world a more human face of the regime. Several  thousand children  have been adopted in Western countries, for example in  Sweden , France, the United States and Switzerland. The context was therefore conducive to abuse, and today, many Chilean families are demanding accountability (see also my publication of 01/13/2023).

To explain this lack of convictions, it must be emphasized that Judge Balmaceda does... the work of a judge: he analyzes the facts and decides whether they constitute a crime within the meaning of the law. The judge notes that although it sometimes came close, it was not possible to construct a legal argument that could lead to a conviction: “All the people who seem concerned and who are alive have been heard, but the existence of a punishable act could not be established, nor the presumptions allowing the qualification of participation in the facts as author, accomplice or receiver. The people who seemed most involved in the facts and who could possibly have established some responsibility, are now deceased.” Asked how to qualify the facts reported by the victim families, the judge replied: “It is difficult to judge the events of the time with today's mentality. Most of the 1,100 cases occurred before 1989, when the legislation was changed and was vastly different from what it is today. It included far fewer guarantees and made it possible to place children with people for adoption.” The judge also details the processes which made it possible to achieve a national or international adoption, and notes how difficult it is to question practices which, at the time, were, at least formally, in conformity with the law in force. And the judge concluded: “an act may be morally reprehensible, but I am the criminal judge, and I must punish behavior that constitutes a crime.”

This testimony is important in light of current debates surrounding responsibilities linked to irregular adoptions of the past. It sheds very specific light on the way in which these acts can be qualified from a purely criminal point of view. If the observation of the impossibility of a criminal conviction can be difficult for the victims to accept (the organization “Hijos y Madres del Silencio” has also requested the resignation of the judge following this article), “the exercise Chilean” has the merit of demonstrating that the legal route is not always the preferred route. Of course, this does not mean that nothing wrong was done and that we should move on; In this sense, historical studies and restorative measures remain absolutely necessary.

But this new piece of the puzzle questions more broadly initiatives aimed at “criminalizing” practices linked to irregular adoptions, in particular those which seek to qualify them as crimes against humanity. Having already expressed myself several times on the subject, I am not going to reopen the debate here, but Judge Balmaceda's findings raise questions: if ordinary criminal law does not allow conviction, is it a question of persisting in this direction and to try to construct other legal reasoning to achieve a conviction “at all costs”? Or is it rather a matter of taking note of the fact that the law's response is precisely to say that it is not possible to convict? Naturally, the diversity of contexts, eras and actors could allow other conclusions to be reached. The fact remains that the law is also subject to general principles of human rights (no punishment without law for example) which must also be respected.