Throw us into jail, but repatriate our child to India,” says Bhavesh Shah. “In any case, without her home is like a jail,” he adds. Bhavesh, a software developer, arrived in Germany in 2018 on a work visa. His wife Dhara delivered a baby girl in February 2021 in Berlin. When the baby was seven months old, she suffered an injury.

What happened thereafter might seem fairly uncomplicated, but in a foreign context, it assumed nightmarish proportions.

On September 23, 2021, the child protection agency made the Shahs sign a document whose contents were in German and, took the baby away. The translator was Urdu-speaking and knew no Gujarati. The Gujarati-speaking Shahs don’t know Urdu. They know Hindi, though not enough to understand legalese.

The incident has since become a legal battle. It transpired that the visiting paternal grandmother had inadvertently caused the injury but was too embarrassed to speak up. The criminal case against the Shahs was closed post-investigation, but the civil custody case is on. In the meantime, somewhere in an undisclosed location, in foster care, their baby has started to walk.

The Shahs have their own set of complaints beginning with the removal of a breastfeeding baby from its mother; of language as a hurdle in communication at every step with every institutional set-up; of decreased frequency of permitted visitations and cultural obdurateness — their request to let the baby be raised on a vegan/vegetarian diet has been ignored.

A 7-year-old boy was found dead inside of a washing machine just hours after his parents reported him missing Thursday.

At about 5.20am Thursday, the parents of Troy Khoeler filed a missing persons report with police, Lt Robert Minchew of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said during a press conference.

When police officers arrived at the home of Troy’s parents in Spring, Texas, the distraught couple said the boy had been missing since about 4am.

After the parents partook in a brief interview for the missing persons report, deputies found there were ‘signs’ indicating that they should search the house in its entirety for the boy.

Minchew could not say what those signs were, or if it was standard procedure, but authorities also searched the immediate area outside the home for the boy.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that a biological mother can also be an “adoptive mother”. The ruling came in a case where a woman’s plea for adopting her daughter from her first marriage, after she tied the knot again, was dismissed by a Bhiwani family court.

During the course of hearing, the Bench of Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Ashok Kumar Verma was told that the biological parents got a divorce vide judgment and decree dated April 25, 2016, passed by Sonepat District Judge (Family Court).

Thereafter, the mother solemnised the second marriage in September 2017. The two then filed the application under the provisions of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act for the seven-year-old girl’s adoption.

Along with the application and other documents, permission/consent by the biological parents for surrendering the minor’s custody to the step-parent, duly allowed and “stamped by the seal” of the Bhiwani Child Welfare Committee, was placed on record.

The minor’s consent that she wanted to stay with the biological mother and her second husband was also placed on record. But the application was rejected on the ground that a biological mother cannot become a mother in “dual status” — a biological mother as well as adoptive mother.

Timeschange,systemschange. Weevolvefrom generationsto generations.

In nearly 15 years as a volunteer group, we have become a known value in the adoption world, where we

have given everyone the opportunity to give a voice around and for adoption and foster-related groups on

our platform. We want to make clear what adoption entails and what impact it has on the various parties.

We aim to strengthen international and domestic adoptions worldwide so that we can provide more

Gather as many of the approximately 4,000 Belgians adopted from South Korea as possible, and then look together at recently surfaced reportage images from more than forty years ago. That is what Yung Fierens wants to achieve. “These images show that people already knew what suffering was being done to us. It's time we finally get recognition for that."

The interest group Critical Adoptees Front Europe (CAFE) is demanding official apologies from the government after images have surfaced of South Korean children arriving in our country completely upset, to be handed over to their adoptive parents. CAFE also wants a committee to be established. That message 'Het Nieuwsblad' Tuesday.

The images date from 1981. According to Yung Fierens (45), chairwoman of the interest group Critical Adoptees Front Europe (CAFE), these images show that even then it was already known what malpractice was happening. For example, children were sold and false birth certificates were also drawn up.

“We request an official apology from the government,” said Fierens. “In addition, we want a truth commission that investigates what went wrong with the intercountry adoptions. And finally, we want support in the search for our parents.”

“As the Flemish Minister of Welfare, Public Health and Family, I understand the questions and concerns about abuses in the past,” responds Hilde Crevits (CD&V). “Flanders has been co-authorized for intercountry adoption since 2012. Previously, this was exclusively a federal competence. There is now a federal debate about how to deal with these abuses.” The minister also points out that at the beginning of June the House unanimously asked the government to start an investigation into illegal adoptions in our country.

Crevits adds that last year, on the basis of a report by an expert panel, the Flemish government laid down the guidelines within which international adoption is still possible in the future. “We try to exclude abuses and abuses as much as possible,” says Crevits.

Becoming a mother without being married was often considered a sin in the 50s, 60s and 70s. That is why thousands of women at that time had to give up their babies for adoption immediately after birth, against their will. One of those 'remote mothers' is Trudy Scheele-Gertsen (75), who, together with women's rights organization Bureau Clara Wichmann, filed a lawsuit against the Dutch State because of these abuses.

32-year-old Iresha was born in India and adopted as a baby by Dutch adoptive parents. Iresha is 12 years old when she dares to confide in someone and tells about how things really go at her home. At the age of 15 she is removed from home. She spends her teenage years in various youth care institutions.

Years later she has her own life on track. She lives in Antwerp where she is educated at the art academy and works on her artworks with great passion. This is her story.

Where I come from

I grew up in a family with Dutch parents. After my arrival in the Netherlands, my parents adopted my sister from Colombia. My mother got pregnant twice more. She interrupted one pregnancy and when I was 7 years old they had another son. I've always felt different. I looked different from the people around me.

When I was 5 years old, I traveled to India with my adoptive parents to meet my biological mother. This was a traumatic experience. I was too young to be confronted with my background; the different culture in India and the poverty I saw. When I got off the plane and was confronted by the people living on the streets, I threw up.

The High Court of Kerala has decided to examine the legal issue whether an order can be

passed to conduct the DNA test of a child in a case of paternity dispute.

The Court will examine if passing such a direction will infringe a child's right to privacy,

which has been declared as a fundamental right under Article 21 by the Supreme Court in

the KS Puttaswamy case. The impact of Section 112 of the Indian Evidence Act 1872,

INDORE: A woman allegedly inflicted burns on the private parts of her nine-year-old adopted daughter as a punishment for bedwetting in Madhya Pradesh's Indore, police said on Monday.

An offence has been registered against the 40-year-old woman under sections 294 (abusing), 323 (manhandling) and 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means) and 506 (threatening) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), MIG police station in-charge Ajay Verma said.

The accused woman is a close relative of the victim and had adopted her, he said.

The woman had inflicted burns on the child's private parts as a punishment for wetting her bed at night, the official said, adding that no arrest has been made so far in the case.

Meanwhile, Child Welfare Committee (CWC) president Pallavi Porwal said the girl had sustained serious burn injuries on her private parts, some hair on her head had been uprooted and there were nail injury marks on her body.