Kolkata: The kidnapper or ‘chele dhora’ has been a device used by generations of families in West Bengal to scare wandering children into coming back home at a certain time or from straying. The other narrative that has survived generations of retelling is the snatching of unattended babies by sanyasis. In popular imagination, the suitably clad ascetic is both anonymous and dangerous.

The archetype of the chele dhora, a criminal disguised as a saffron robed sanyasi, is perhaps a variation of Ravana kidnapping Sita in the Panchavati forest. The reinvention of the trope, using disguise to nab the children is a reversal of roles and a sneaky, smart move that insinuates that there is a connection between the Bharatiya Janata Party and crime. After the arrest of Juhi Chowdhury, a local leader of the BJP’s women’s wing in North Bengal for alleged links to a baby adoption racket, the controversy has now brought within its ambit Kailash Vijayvargiya, general secretary of the BJP in West Bengal and, Rajya Sabha MP Roopa Ganguly. It had emerged that Chowdhury had met them after her name surfaced. Chowdhury had been on the run and was arrested a few days after allegations against her name were made.

Vile as the crime of trafficking in babies is, the political connection has brought into sharper focus the ‘huge networks’ that run these operations. The police also arrested the Darjeeling district child protection officer (DCPO), Mrinal Ghosh, exposing the underbelly of the network that includes errant officials, doctors, nursing homes and NGOs. The arrests were made after key accused Chandana Chakrobarty — who owned the children’s home and the shelter for the mentally ill and disabled, Bimala Sishu Griha and Ahsray — revealed details about how the nexus worked.

The crime has inevitably become entangled in the saffron groups versus Mamata Banerjee tussle over political turf. This one dramatic case, both, focuses public attention on the problem and also shields the size of it from closer scrutiny, because the ‘huge networks’ that operate to keep the trade going, continue to do so.

It points to a chilling reality. In West Bengal, which tops the list of Indian states for trafficking in women and children, acquiring or procuring people – babies for adoption, the young and the able bodied as labour, women, girls and boys for the sex trade, the healthy for organs, for organised for begging and for every other form of exploitation that the imagination can conceive – there is a well- established supply chain that procures what the market or trade in persons wants.

Search result - view documentECLI: NL: RBAMS: 2020: 6419

Authority

Court of Amsterdam

Date of judgment

10-12-2020

Mumbai: After falling in trap, adoptive parents set up foundation to clean up system

TNN | Oct 26, 2020, 07.13 AM IST

Mumbai: After falling in trap, adoptive parents set up foundation to clean up system

MUMBAI: Delhi residents Abhinav Aggarwal and his wife, awaiting custody of their four-year-old son after a city civil court earlier this month declared them his adoptive parents, launched a foundation on Sunday to streamline the adoption system and create awareness.

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COIMBATORE: The city police on Saturday arrested four people, including two women, from Karumbukadai in connection with illegal adoption of two girl children and physical harassment of the youngest child.

The office of district child protection officer rescued the children – aged seven years and four years – and accommodated them in a children’s home.

“After separating from her husband, the biological mother of the children had started living with another man. Four months ago, she gave the children to a friend, who gave them to his two sisters. Within a month or so, the woman who was taking care of the four-year-old child, handed her over to another couple who was looking for adoption,” said an official. “The couple assaulted the child, causing scars on her body. Their neighbours alerted police.”

Podanur police officers and child protection officials visited the house on Friday and rescued the child. “We shifted the kids to a children’s home. We might send the elder girl with the family upon submitting legal adoption documents as she was taken good care of. The youngest child will be subjected to medical examination,” the official said

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NAGPUR: Ending an interesting legal battle over a 6-year-old boy’s

custody between two couples, the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court

allowed the child to remain with his adoptive parents while dismissing the

case filed by his biological parents, who are from “poor background”. The

child was born out of an extramarital affair of his biological parents on

Main accused in the case of alleged fraud in the adoption of Congolese children, the Belgian-Congolese lawyer, Julienne Mpemba, breaks the silence and delivers, for the first time, her version of the facts to the media. And this, a week after his dismissal in correctional by the Chamber of advice of Dinant. For Ms. Pemba, this is a fabricated case, because there has never been any child theft and the investigation has never proven otherwise. ACTUALITE.CD publishes below, the entire interview with the Director of the TUMAINI Orphanage.

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I’ve always known that I’m adopted, it’s a conversation that my parents and I have had since I was two and we all flew back on a plane from China. In many ways, I think that the candor on the distinctions between myself and the rest of my family, and indeed, the world around me, encouraged me to always have a strong voice. I felt like I needed to say things louder, in order to be equally recognised.

Things that should have been easy for me became more challenging as I came to terms with issues surrounding race and identity.

The Girl With Many Faces | Jinling Wu

Allie was adopted from China when she was two years old.

As I was growing into this world, there were so many foundations that I was missing, and I had to create those roots myself

I’ve always known that I’m adopted, it’s a conversation that my parents and I have had since I was two and we all flew back on a plane from China. In many ways, I think that the candor on the distinctions between myself and the rest of my family, and indeed, the world around me, encouraged me to always have a strong voice. I felt like I needed to say things louder, in order to be equally recognised.

Things that should have been easy for me became more challenging as I came to terms with issues surrounding race and identity.

The Girl With Many Faces | Jinling Wu

Allie was adopted from China when she was two years old.

As I was growing into this world, there were so many foundations that I was missing, and I had to create those roots myself

In the early 1980s, I was adopted from an orphanage in Sri Lanka. No adoption organization was involved in the mediation of the adoption. I was adopted privately or informally by my Swedish adoptive parents.

My adoptive mother's brother worked in the tourism industry in Sri Lanka and mediated the contact between my adoptive parents and a local couple who handled adoptions abroad. The couple found children for tourists who wanted to adopt and assisted with the legalization of the adoption. They facilitated the adoption process and realized the family formation projects of thousands of charter tourists.

That Swedish charter tourists in particular adopted informally during this time has been discussed and reported in several contexts in both Sweden and Sri Lanka. A Swedish social worker who has reasoned about a reason why Swedes adopted informally believes that the waiting times for adoption were long in Sweden. In the late 1970s, for example, an adoption organization had waiting times of 3-4 years. From this, the social worker believes that it became understandable that those who wanted to become adoptive parents chose informal paths to form their family.

The first so-called long-haul flights from Sweden went to Sri Lanka and Gambia as early as 1971. The countries were marketed as relatively cheap destinations far away in relation to Sweden. The marketing was aimed at Swedes who were at a normal income level with capital to spend and time to spare for a trip.

The tour operators 'travel catalogs offer an opportunity to get closer to a motive for many Swedish charter tourists adopting children during their holiday stay in Sri Lanka and an understanding of the Swedish tourists' expectations of the country. One theme that went through the marketing was that Sri Lanka was presented as different in comparison with Sweden.

A woman adopted from Southport in 1953 was brought to tears when she found out her birth mother was still alive.

Margaret, who grew up in Warwickshire, was adopted from Southport when she was just six months old.

Born in 1953, the woman always believed her birth mother was one of the many Irish women who came over in the 1950's for the sake of adoption.

Margaret went on BBC2 's DNA Family Secrets in order to search for her birth mother.

Going into the show, the only thing Margaret knew about her biological mother is the name written on her birth certificate, although she wasn't convinced that it was a real name.