It was a warm September morning and the house of an employee of the Northern Power Distribution Company of Telangana Ltd was decked up for a small yet intimate religious ceremony in the small village. It was a joyous occasion for the man, in his forties, and his wife. A long wait for the couple to adopt a child had finally come true—this was to be the ‘homecoming’ of a 10-year-old boy the couple had ‘adopted’ a few days earlier from a care home in Mumbai. But the story didn’t have a happy ending. A police team swooped on the house that day and arrested the man on charges of kidnapping—the boy he had adopted was found to have been kidnapped from Mumbai earlier. The man landed in jail, though he claims he was the victim of an elaborate racket.

Last year, a man in Mumbai found out that his three children—put in a childcare home run by a well-known charity after the death of their mother—have been adopted by an American couple without his knowledge. He has been fighting a legal battle since then. His case may be not exactly of fraud as the charity had put out newspaper notices about the plan to put up the three children for adoption. But for many others, it has been a nightmarish experience after being taken for a ride by organised gangs.

Experts and activists say the main reason for adoption frauds are India’s complicated laws and their cumbersome implementation process due to which couples desperate to adopt children often look for unauthorised channels. India tightened its adoption rules after cases emerged of parents being coerced or tricked to give up their children for inter-country adoptions. And the involvement of doctors, nurses and orphanage officials in a racket that runs into crores of rupees annually makes it all the more difficult for unsuspecting couples in ­detecting fraudulent deals. Sometimes, of course, couples go ahead despite being aware of the illegal nature of the adoption process.

Ashok Chand, a former deputy commissioner of police (crime) who had unearthed at least three adoption rackets in Delhi around 2010, says that racketeers have more or less the same modus operandi in which they either buy ­children from poor parents or ask them to ­conceive and hand over the newborn to needy parents in return for money.

“One gang had four members, including two women, a doctor and another man. The women were operating the racket in the garb of ­running NGOs,” Chand says.

“Oh, you are here. Nayantara is getting ready still. Please wait here in the office”. As we entered the Director’s chamber in the children’s centre in an industrial part of north Delhi on that crisp Nov­ember morning a dozen years ago, the mom­ents of waiting for Nayantara seemed to stretch out interminably. Then right in the middle of our half-hearted small talk with the official-looking people in the room, we stopped in mid-sentence as we heard a tiny roar of voices and a swift swoosh as the curtains parted. A bun­dled baby was carried proudly into the room by a beaming nurse. I could see a nice head of hair that had been abundantly and freshly oiled, the smallest of noses, and a light blue cotton onesie with little cars and trains printed on it, no doubt picked out for the spec­ial occasion. My cousin Vatsala’s sage voice rang in my ears. “Didda, don’t get put off by the hair oil”. Before I knew it, Nayantara was in my arms, and I was almost blinded by her million-­watt smile and the spray of dimples all over her face. “She looks just like you”, said the adoption officer triumphantly. Did she know I used to dream of a girl with dimples?

Not because of, but perhaps in spite of what the adoption officer told me, I find myself ever so

often tracing my fingers across my daughter’s face while she sleeps gently next to me. I marvel

at her perfect little nose that has now filled out, her shapely light-brown eyebrows, her

lengthening body, and the fading blue birthmarks that once took up the entirety of her back.

Though the committee members have been at the receiving end of cyber bullying ever since they formed a platform to support the cause, what prompted them to approach the police was a fake petition.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Perturbed by relentless cyber bullying, the solidarity committee formed to support Anupama S Chandran and her partner Ajith Kumar in the child adoption case has lodged a complaint with the state police chief demanding action against the culprits.

Though the committee members have been at the receiving end of cyber bullying ever since they formed a platform to support the cause, what prompted them to approach the police top boss was a fake petition, which was circulated maliciously on various social media platforms urging the CM to provide a government job to Ajith.

The post bore the names of all activists, who have been part of Anupama-Ajith Solidarity Committee as signatories. Social activist P Usha, who is a member of the committee, said the organisation as well as the individuals who were named in the post have filed separate police complaints.

“On my complaint, I got a response that the Thiruvananthapuram city police commissioner will look into the matter. Other activists too have filed police complaints. Apart from the couple, the activists who stood up for them have also been subjected to vicious online attacks. This is a dangerous trend,” she said.

The sector is such a popular target for these locust capitalists because of the good chances of high returns

By: Lilian Marijnissen and Peter Kwint

Our youth services are not doing well. In recent years – after a decentralization under Rutte-2 that was accompanied by a major cutback – youth care has become more expensive, waiting lists have grown and the staff shortage has increased. Half of all newly trained youth care workers will leave the sector within two years. The youth care workers will go on strike next Monday, in protest against the increasing workload and the rapidly growing staff shortage.

Nevertheless, the sector is very popular in some places. Private equity funds – so-called springcock capitalists or venture capitalists, depending on who you ask – see youth care as 'an interesting growth market'. For example, the mental health organization Mentaal Beter recently fell into the hands of the French investment company Apax. Another provider was taken over by Holland Capital. Apax owns companies worth a billion or 50. They owned De Persgroep, Tommy Hilfiger and the software company Exact. Clearly people with a passion for youth care. The fact that they use youth care as a profit model is not a natural phenomenon, but a consequence of allowing the market in youth care. We also see this happening in elderly care and childcare, where private equity is now the order of the day.

The earnings model of these looters roughly consists of three possibilities. You can buy a company with borrowed money, hang that debt on the company, sell profitable parts and bankrupt the rest, you can add as much value as possible to a company in the short term and then sell it for a profit, or you can skim dividends , briefly summarized. You can find all kinds of things about that and we have previously seen at V&D and childcare organization Estro what consequences this can have.

My Story

I believe we all have a story, and more than that – we all have a purpose, and it’s the journey that makes us great. Living a life driven by my values, my goal is to leave a legacy that lasts.

To lead people and organisations with wisdom, courage and understanding knowing that fulfilment in life comes from WHO we are, not what we do. And that kind of legacy, will impact generations to come.

My story started here: born in the slums of India, to a woman who didn’t want me. Abandoned on the steps of a hospital, left for dead. Unloved, unwanted and prisoner to the caste system that hands down a life sentence of poverty on its victims.

From the outside it appears as though I should have lived an impoverished, uneducated life. I should have been one of the billions living each day forced to fight for survival. That should have been me. But it wasn’t. Because I was saved by a charitable act. Adopted by a family in Australia who chose to give up their money, their time, their love and welcome me into their family. Fighting all odds, bureaucracy, red tape and financial hurdles, they took me in, loved me as their own and taught me how an act of selflessness can make a life-altering difference in the world. This is my story. And today, it’s what drives me. What my parents did for one I want to do for many. Showing people that they can live a life defined by who they are, not by what they do or where they’ve come from. The past doesn’t have to determine your future because it’s the journey that makes us great.

State Adoption Resource Agency writes to CARA

The couple from Andhra Pradesh who had returned the baby under their foster care to its biological mother in Kerala may retain their seniority in the adoption process.

The State Adoption Resource Agency is understood to have written to the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) to maintain the seniority of the couple in the adoption process.

If a baby, which is given in foster care or adoption, has to be returned for no fault of the foster-care or adoptive parents, State agencies usually request the Central authorities to retain the seniority of such parents, sources privy to the process said.

The parents can opt for the States from which they wish to adopt the baby. Once babies are available for legal adoption from those States, the allotment process, which is a system-generated one, will be set in motion. There is absolutely no human intervention in the process of allotting a baby. The allocation process is run in a transparent manner even while maintaining the confidentiality of the process. One cannot predict how and when the allocation process of the baby starts, sources said.

Thiruvananthapuram: For Ajith and Anupama, victims of an illegal

adoption case, who were recently reunited with their child after over a

year, a fresh issue has emerged.

The Thiruvananthapuram-based couple has filed a police complaint in

connection with a poster that raises the demand for a government job

Coming to the rescue of a 10 year-old girl given in adoption in a battle for custody between two women, the Madras High Court has ruled the minor cannot be separated from her foster mother who had cared and nurtured the child for a decade.

The court allowed the girl’s biological parents and siblings free access to her during the weekends, but made it clear she would stay with the woman who cared for her for 10 years after she was given in adoption to her.

The biological mother, who had given her second daughter in adoption when she was about 100 days old to her brother’s wife, cannot take her back after 10 years of living with the foster mother, a division bench of Justices P N Prakash and R Hemalatha, said recently.The court allowed the girl's biological parents and siblings free access to her during the weekends, but made it clear she would stay with the woman who cared for her for 10 years after she was given in adoption to her.

The bench set aside an order of the Child Welfare Committee in Salem, lodging the distraught girl in a local care home.

The child should be handed over back to her adopted mother Sathya who shall permit Sivakumar and Saranya, the biological parents of the child in question, to have free access to her, during weekends, along with her other siblings.

This article is the 24th in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Apparently, many Koreans never expected that the children it had sent away via adoption would return as adults with questions demanding to be answered. However, thousands of adoptees visit Korea each year. Once they rediscover this country, it becomes a turning point in their lives. We should embrace the dialogue with adoptees to discover the path to recovering our collective humanity. ? ED.

We adoptees are the embodiment of "han," a term that could be described as an "internalized feeling of deep sorrow, grief, regret and anger." Sharing this feeling makes us so very connected to our ancestors. As adoptees, besides what we carry genetically, we are spiritually very Korean.

My Belgian name is Leslie. I was born in Busan in 1978. My mother's name was Lee, so after adoption I became Less Lee. I was taken away from my birth environment when I was few months old. It was traumatic, but I couldn't realize it, nor express my feelings about it. Other adoptees have similar or other traumatic experiences from the start.

There are many horrible stories of adoptees growing up. People tend to try to measure the misery of adoptees' lives, but abuse, loneliness and desperation shouldn't be measured; they are always a heavy weight.

When I accompanied a Korean adoptee friend in a reunion with their siblings, it struck me that the siblings living in Korea were so envious and jealous of my friend. Many Koreans have an image of adoptees as children who won a "golden ticket." And yes, some adoptees may truly feel like that, and feel very grateful for being adopted too. But it's just prejudice when you don't know someone else's life.

Hyun Sook Han never tired of her role as a matchmaker of sorts, connecting thousands of Korean children with American adoptive families over four decades in Minnesota.

Her work as a social worker and pioneer in international adoption fulfilled a promise she made to children she saw left behind in snowbanks as she fled her home on foot during the Korean War.

She vowed to one day come back to help them — and made building families through adoption her life's work.

Han, 83, died of kidney cancer Nov. 5 at her home in Shoreview.

Han was born in 1938 in Seoul and lived during the Japanese occupation of Korea and the Korean War.