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.

Thiruvananthapuram: Even as the state government has claimed that it

was standing beside Anupama S Chandran in her fight to get her missing

child back, the CPM has dragged itself into a fresh controversy.

At least two leaders of the party, including minister Saji Cherian, have

made controversial statements against Anupama and her partner Ajith

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Wanted and (not) found: Annick tells

We talk quickly about seeking, finding and contacting first parents, but not everyone has to search, can find or has contact. In this series, various adoptees tell how they experience this.

Annick | 36 years | °India | founder Adoptie Schakel | children's coach

“Meanwhile, the images have faded, but they are still there”

I was almost five years old when my adoptive parents came to pick me up in Zaventem. That was in December 1989. A year and a half before that, my uncle took me to the orphanage in Madras. He came to visit me regularly, but after six months I was transferred to Calcutta. I grew up in Tongeren with an older brother.

The fact that while I'm typing this two toddlers tearing down the living room, screaming with laughter, doesn't really make any sense from a medical point of view. My husband and I had wanted a child for years before their arrival and did our best to get it, but to no avail. There was nothing wrong with his sperm, the cause was mine.

Or more precisely, with my endometriosis, a condition in which the lining of the uterus grows outside your uterus – which not only causes a lot of pain, but often also infertility.

Because our desire to have children continued to be great, we finally decided to sign up for adoption. We were sure we were going to love a child who hadn't grown in my womb just as much, and we weren't deterred by the fact that for many years only children with so-called 'special needs' were eligible for an intercountry adoption process.

Those 'special needs' could be anything from a missing limb or a baby with HIV infection, to mothers who had used drugs or alcohol during pregnancy. We learned all about it during the compulsory adoption course that every aspiring adoptive parent in the Netherlands must follow. Six half days in an impersonal office, somewhere on an industrial estate, with about five other couples who also hoped to hold a child in their arms through adoption.

That course was not the only requirement to qualify for an actual adoption process. Our finances were checked extensively, we had to undergo a medical examination by an independent doctor to check that our risk of death was not too high to allow us a child, we had to fill out 1001 forms and had three conversations with someone from child protection who had to determine whether we would be suitable parents.

Immediately after her birth in Sri Lanka, Sharinda Nathaliya Wolffers (33) was adopted by Dutch parents. This year she saw her biological mother for the first time. "People who can't have children and therefore adopt, give me a bad taste."

“You are not able to take care of your baby, sisters in the Sri Lankan hospital, where I was born, told my mother. You better give your daughter up for adoption.

My mother was not married to my father during the pregnancy. That is really not possible for a poor woman in Sri Lanka, who has little money to live on.

My mother was not married to my father during the pregnancy. That is really not possible for a poor woman in Sri Lanka, who has little money to live on.

As a ten-day-old baby, I was introduced to my Dutch adoptive parents. They could not have children, but with all their good intentions they adopted and raised me in the Netherlands. Still, my adoptive mother realized that her happiness meant my birth mother's grief.