Baby in custody of issueless Pune couple

By Kumud Jenamani in Jamshedpur

An Adityapur woman, who was forced by poverty to virtually sell her infant boy to an issueless couple in April, approached police late on Friday night pleading she wanted her son back, the case raising highlighting how unauthorised adoptions work.

Adityapur police have contacted the couple, now in Pune, and ordered them to return the infant to its biological mother in a couple of days.

Birth mother Seema Mahali aka Seema Rao, who lives in Rambadhaiya area in Adityapur, said she had no choice but to hand over her newborn son to a well-off family in the area when she failed to return a loan of Rs 5,000 that she had taken from them.

A chance audio clip has blown the lid off a well-entrenched network involved in the sale of newborns. Such is its expanse that the CB-CID has been roped in to investigate. Poverty of ‘sellers’ and desperation among ‘buyers’ is believed to have fuelled the racket

On April 25, an audio clip of a conversation on procuring babies for illegal adoption by childless couples went viral on social media.

An inquiry by Namakkal police into the conversation, which sounded like one between a prospective buyer and a broker, uncovered a network involved in the sale of 30 newborns – 24 of them female -- from various parts of the State, including villages in the Kolli Hills of Namakkal District.

Police said the racket involved facilitation of illegal adoption of babies, mostly born into poor families, for huge sums of money. The price varied with the gender, health and complexion of the child.

The Namakkal police arrested S. Amuthavalli, a retired nursing assistant from Rasipuram, her husband S. Ravichandran, who works in a public sector bank, and an ambulance driver, Murugeshan, from Kolli Hills. They also arrested a few agents from Erode, who lured childless couples into illegal procurement of children. They were the link between the “buyers” and Amuthavalli, who then worked the deal with parents who wanted to give their children away.

The ghost cemetery on the outskirts of Bucharest: 5,000 children placed in common graves in Pipera

May 19, 2019 7 6840 6 minutes to read

FacebookTwitterGoogle+LinkedInStumbleUponTumblrpinterestRedditVKontakteOdnoklassnikiPocket

RTnews | GOVERNMENT SECRETS. The ghost cemetery on the outskirts of Bucharest: 5,000 children placed in common graves in Pipera

Over 5,000 unidentified children were placed in approximately 100 common graves in two cemeteries, said by the poor and children, in Pipera and Frumu?ani. Everything happened between 1997 and 2000. On most of the crosses, now we, from here, do not write anything. Looks like a ghost cemetery. But he hides the pain of a mother whose child was lost in one of these common pits, and now she can't find it anymore. The woman made complaints against those who brought her child here and received a criminal fine for being silent ...

More than 5,000 unidentified children were buried in about 100 mass graves in two cemeteries, said to be of the poor and children, in Pipera and Frumu?ani. It all happened between 1997 and 2000. On most of the crosses, now we, from Berton, do not write anything. It looks like a ghost cemetery. But he hides the pain of a mother whose child was lost in one of these common pits, and now she can't find it. The woman filed a complaint against those who brought her child here and received a criminal fine for keeping silent…

On 21.08.2014 at the headquarters of the Inspector General of Police was filed a complaint registered at number 158778. Through this document, Angela Tudorache, nurse at a hospital in Bucharest, asked the bodies authorized to search for the body of her child, who died in 1997 in The Municipal Hospital and buried, with "documents that can no longer be found", in one of the common graves in the children's cemetery in Pipera. The woman's story is hallucinatory and terrifying at the same time.

"I gave birth to Gabriel, my first child, in 1997 and they came two days later to tell me that he had died. I went crazy with pain. Then they put a document in front of me in which I handed over the child's body, to be buried by I don't know who. They said that, not being baptized, he needed a special job, which they would take care of. I signed, but I tell you I didn't know what I was signing at the time. Then I asked to be shown my child, and they took me to the morgue. Gabriel was in a refrigerator, cut in half, without organs. An autopsy had been performed. I asked him to let me take him and take care of him, to be sewn, dressed and put in a coffin. They did not leave me, they reminded me that I signed the paper and that it will be buried, they said then, by the Patriarchate "

SECRETS OF GOVERNORS. The ghost cemetery on the outskirts of Bucharest: 5,000 children buried in mass graves in Pipera

"I've been judging them for almost 10 years"

The Cradle Baby Scheme that provides for cradles at government hospitals and Primary Health Centres to receive unwanted newborns, and put them up for legal adoption, could prevent illegal sale of babies. But, the system needs to be tightened.

For instance, the Cradle Baby Centre at the Dharmapuri Government Hospital itself needs resuscitation. The centre has remained dysfunctional for close to a year, after its lone staff, who was paid Rs.100 a day, found a better job.

Babies, however, find their way to the cradle because the centre is located within the hospital, and the babies come from the hospital's maternity ward, says District Child Protection Officer M. Sivagandhi. “We get routine calls from the doctors and the nurses from the maternity ward, alerting us on parents who have a third girl child, or an unwed mother wanting to give away a baby.”

All the 24 private homes run by NGOs and the two government homes in the district have a cradle. But, babies are almost never dropped in them, says the director of a home.

This is where PHCs can play a crucial role.

What is Guidance and socio - legal advice to the family?

It is a service that seeks to orient, advise and carry out the pertinent procedures required by the Family that presents problems in aspects related to Family and Minors Law, to prevent through conciliation the initiation of judicial processes, in order to solve an existing conflict or prevent one eventual.

What is sought with Sociolegal Counseling and Counseling?

Advice and social and legal guidance.

Legal Consultation (Family and Minors Law).

The state government plans to maintain a centralised data on each child, his or her progress, education, medical history, and where the child’s file stands in adoption procedure. This will also include linkage with Aadhaar card.

In a bid to streamline the process of tracking an infant in government shelter homes, the state Women and Child Development (WCD) department will soon start digitising records of each child brought under its care, right from admission till adoption.

The state government plans to maintain a centralised data on each child, his or her progress, education, medical history, and where the child’s file stands in adoption procedure. This will also include linkage with Aadhaar card. Currently, very few shelter homes, both private and government, link admitted infants with Aadhaar, that too once the child turns five.

Officials with the WCD department said the data on orphans or abandoned children is mostly documented in hard copies in individual shelter homes without a standardised format. “The Juvenile Justice Act has a uniform procedure for each child. For instance, filling of Form 17 when child is produced before child welfare committee. All these legal requirements need to be streamlined and made available on a central database,” said Idzes Kundan, newly appointed WCD secretary.

Plans to boost foster care, where a child is placed with a family rather than a shelter home, are also underway. According to the Central Adoption Regional Agency (CARA), in 2016, foster care guidelines were amended under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2015. The central government introduced group foster care concept where a family could look after more than one child and look until their adoption. The government also allows foster family to adopt the infant if they look after him for at least five years.

As soon as adoptions make money, fraud lurks around the corner

The resignation of the UNICEF director in connection with adoptions from Guatemala will have led to difficult conversations, primarily with the children's rights organization, but also in all Flemish families with an adopted child. I can participate. What can we still assume to be true? Can we open up the wound or leave the initiative to the adopted person? Adoption involves so much good intention and so much unspoken, only suspected suffering that questioning it is a big taboo.

Congo, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, India, Guatemala ... Meanwhile, it is clear that there are no good and less good countries of origin. The same applies to the countries of destination, Belgium is certainly not alone. Where adoptions make money, fraud lurks around the corner.

Dolores is now telling her story in the Belgian press for the first time, suspicious as she is, because of what she experienced as a child. At the age of five she was abducted in her village in the Guatemalan mountains. A bit like the kidnapped Maddie McCann, but without worldwide attention. Her documents were forged and hoped, another child who could go to Belgium. Only after 25 years were her mother's prayers answered and the lost daughter was at the door. The mother, the daughter, the adoptive parents, are all signed for life.

CAUTION AND RESPECT

Shareable link to entire report: https://drive.google.com/open?id=12zmis6XdXnYFJ_IuAPelAZ54YiTJxfpu

With references to Rapport Overwater (FIOM) = adoption as child protection

n

Adoption campaigners have hit out at the "hypocrisy and dishonesty" of the Government in refusing to launch an inquiry into forced and illegal adoption.

It comes as a number of prominent independent politicians introduced a motion in the Dáil calling for an immediate inquiry and for immediate redress to be offered to survivors of Mother and Baby Homes.

The current inquiry into Mother and Baby Homes is limited to adoption practices and procedures of agencies and individuals with a direct connection to a mother and baby home. For more than a decade now, campaigners have called for a full State inquiry into adoption practices across all agencies.

Paul Redmond of the Coalition of Mother and Baby Home Survivors (CMABS) said the increasing support for a full inquiry into is encouraging:

"This Dáil motion has exposed the hypocrisy and dishonesty at the heart of a Government who have decided on a 'deny till they die' policy towards an elderly and dying survivor community.