NEW DELHI: A parliamentary panel is learned to have recommended omitting the reference to "illegitimate child" from the adoption law, saying that no child is illegitimate whether born within or out of wedlock. The panel has also underlined the need to enact a single comprehensive law covering guardianship aspects of various categories of persons and applicable to all, irrespective of religion, sources said.

Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice chaired by senior BJP leader Sushil Modi made this recommendation while reviewing the "Guardians and Wards Act".

The panel is likely to table its report on 'Review of Guardianship and Adoption Laws, in the ongoing Monsoon session.

The committee in the report is understood to have suggested that it strongly feels that the word 'illegitimate' should be omitted as no child is illegitimate and law should be the same for all children whether born within or out of wedlock. It feels there is a need to amend the Guardians and Wards Act to give primacy to the 'welfare principle' over parental authority.

It is also of the view that there is a need to define what constitutes the welfare of the child in broader terms in both the Acts, the sources said.

The Supreme Court, on Friday, adjourned the hearing of the petition seeking

simplification in the process of adoption in India. Additional Solicitor General, Mr. K.M.

Nataraj apprised a Bench comprising Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and J.B. Pardiwala that

he had not received the petition. The Bench asked the petitioner-in-person to handover a

copy to him.

The DN Nagar police registered a first information report (FIR) against Harry D’Souza and his wife, Soni, both residents of Juhu Galli, under sections 363 (kidnapping), 365 ( intent for abduction)

Mumbai: For 16-year-old Pooja Gaud, August 5 will forever remain etched in her mind as the day that proved that miracles do indeed occur. The teenager was reunited with her mother nine years after she was allegedly kidnapped by a couple barely a kilometre away from where she lived in a slum in Juhu Galli, Andheri.

The DN Nagar police registered a first information report (FIR) against Harry D’Souza and his wife, Soni, both residents of Juhu Galli, under sections 363 (kidnapping), 365 ( intent for abduction), 368 (wrongful confinement ), 370 ( trafficking) and 374 (unlawfully compelling a person for labour ) of the Indian Penal Code.D’Souza was arrested late Thursday night and remanded to police custody till August 10.

The search for Pooja made headlines when Assistant Sub Inspector Rajendra Bhosale, who was incharge of the missing persons’ bureau at DN Nagar police station from 2010 to 2015 had said that his team had managed to find all the children reported missing at his bureau save one: Pooja.

“I still carry her photo in my wallet,” Bhosale said, speaking from his home in Khed, in Ratnagiri district. The 65-year-old who retired in 2015, used to carry the well-thumbed photo of Pooja as a class 2 student in a blue pinafore, in his shirt pocket, in the hope of locating her. “Even after my retirement, I thought about the girl every day and prayed that she is found. I am elated and I can now rest without any more tension.”

Octogenarian and child of five among adopted children or parents applying for unrestricted access to early years data

An 81-year-old, adopted as a child, and a 74-year-old mother who gave up her baby for adoption, are among 900 people who have registered to trace their parents or children after landmark legislation was passed in Ireland.

The public response to the new laws, which came into force on 1 July, is opening decades-old wounds for children and parents who were separated at birth, some sent to the UK or the US, during the past 100 years.

The data, released on Thursday by the Adoption Authority of Ireland, indicate many have lived to late adulthood without knowing who their birth parents are.

Of the 891 who have registered the AAI said the oldest person to request their data was 81, and the mean age of applicants (both parent and child) was 50. The youngest was a five-year-old whose adoptive parents had registered on their behalf.

Three men thought they were the only one donating sperm to a lesbian couple, but were horrified to find out on TikTok they had mixed their samples together in a 'semen cocktail'

Sperm donors have slammed a lesbian couple for mixing samples and creating a semen "cocktail" to conceive in a process that has been compared to a three-man "orgy".

Three men thought they were the only one donating to the couple and that the baby would be their's.

However, the woman actually drove across Sydney, Australia during lockdown in 2021 - when travel was prohibited - to collect samples from different men.

The men only found out what had really happened when they stumbled across a TikTok video, in which the women revealed they had been rotating between the men.

UNDER SUSPICION

John Davies is a hero to some adoptive parents, a baby-selling profiteer to many governments

BRUCE WALLACE

At the very least, John Davies doesn’t look like the baby seller so many people make him out to be. People who traffic in children are supposed to be shadowy figures with suspicious eyes, living by furtive movements that make them difficult for police and journalists to track down. John Davies is a warm, welcoming bear of a man. He opens his home to visitors. He answers every question asked about his activities in an articulate, soft-spoken manner. He has an address on the Internet.

To those people who have adopted children out of eastern Europe with Davies’ help, the British-born Anabaptist minister is even a hero. “While governments conspire to make the eye of the needle even smaller for international adoptions, Davies thumbs his nose at bureaucrats and tries to break their cartel,” says one New York City businessman who adopted a Romanian child through Davies. “It has made him enemies in high places, but I think he is sort of like Indiana Jones, an entrepreneur.” Davies, who has lived in Romania since 1991, says that he is simply an advocate of children’s rights and a sworn opponent of government-controlled adoptions. That process, he maintains, is too slow and follows national political interests (such as China’s tendency to put mostly girls up for foreign adoptions) rather than the interests of children.

ABANDONED CHILDREN AND INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION:

AN ANALYSIS OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF

INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS IN ROMANIA, 1990-2001

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) _ Government and international officials on Friday urged Romania’s Senate to pass a controversial adoption law that would crack down on a growing practice of selling babies.

The proposed law establishes jail sentences of up to five years for biological parents and baby dealers who accept payment to facilitate adoptions. It also forbids the adoption of children who have been abandoned less than six months.

On Monday, the Senate postponed debate on the bill, which was proposed by the government last month and was passed two weeks ago by Parliament’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies.

If the law is passed, a government committee would control all adoptions instead of the present practice of allowing local courts to handle many of the procedures. This means adoptions would be halted about three months because the government’s Adoption Committee stopped operating last week and doesn’t plan to resume before September.

That has raised a furor of dissent among hundreds of Western couples who are in Romania searching for children to adopt. Some have begun lobbying senators to block the bill.

The aftermath of transnational

illegal adoptions: Redressing

human rights violations in the

intercountry adoption system

with instruments of

MANY people will see the Adoption Board's decision to appeal the High Court judgment recognising Chinese adoptions as either uncaring or rigidly bureaucratic. The announcement is a major blow to the couples who took the legal action. But while it may be bad news in the short term, there is logic in the Adoption Board's action, which may not be evident at first glance.

Adopting children from abroad is seen generally as a heroic under-taking but strict regulation of intercountry adoption may be compatible with helping needy children.

Coherent laws and an insistence on high standards of practice are safeguards for all concerned, particularly children and birth parents.

The evidence from other countries points to the danger in loosening controls too quickly, as it can leave the way open for exploitation.

Those who took their case to the High Court last week are clear that the children they are adopting have been abandoned and will literally die if not adopted.