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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Differing procedures based on faith against the Constitution

The Supreme Court on Friday asked the government to respond to a plea seeking uniform, religious and gender neutral grounds for adoption and guardianship of children in the country.

A Bench led by Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde issued notice to the Centre on the plea by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay that people of different faiths continue to follow different statutes and personal laws in matters of adoption and guardianship.

“Even after years of Independence, adoption and guardianship procedures are very complex cumbersome and neither gender nor religion neutral,” the petition said.

It said Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains are dealt with Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act and Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act. Muslims, Christians and Parsis have their own personal laws. Couples belonging to different religions have to seek adoption under the JJ Act of 2000. NRIs, overseas citizens and foreign prospective adoptive parents, living in a country which is signatory to the Hague Adoption Convention and wish to adopt Indian child, need to approach an authorised foreign adoption agency or central authority subject to the Adoption Regulation of 2017.

Kim Ju-won (left) and Park Sun-min (right) say same-sex couples in South Korea are excluded from incentives to start families.

Lee Hyeon-ju and her husband Choi Kyu-ho have been helping out at her grandmother’s dried fish business on weekends.

The couple married in 2019, and live in Pohang on South Korea’s east coast. They’re already making plans to travel overseas once the pandemic is over.

Lee and Choi, both 29, have a secret that they are keeping from some members of their family — they don’t plan to have children. Lee said that revelation would be very disappointing to her husband's parents who expect her to produce a grandson for them.

South Korea has the world’s lowest fertility rate, and in 2020, its population shrank. The government plans to increase financial incentives for married couples to have babies, but that excludes nontraditional families such as same-sex couples and single parents.

The investigation into the possible role of the Dutch government in illegal adoptions from abroad between 1967 and 1998 has been completed. The report of the Intercountry Adoption Research Committee will be published on Monday 8 February. On that day, the committee will hand over the investigation to Minister for Legal Protection Sander Dekker. He commissioned an investigation into possible wrongdoing in international adoptions.

The committee focuses on adoptions from Bangladesh, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Colombia. Illegal adoptions may have been made at that time involving Dutch government officials. Earlier, according to Dekker, it had already been shown that this may have been the case with illegal adoptions from Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s. That's why he set up the committee.

The researchers were given access to all information about the adoptions and were allowed to interrogate involved (former) officials. They also sent a questionnaire to a large number of Dutch adopted from abroad. The report was actually due on October 1, 2020, but due to the corona virus, the committee did not meet that deadline. For example, it was not possible to go abroad for research.

Tjibbe Joustra, former chairman of the Dutch Safety Board (OVV), is leading the investigation. Beatrice de Graaf and Bert-Jan Houtzagers are also on the committee. De Graaf is a terrorism expert and professor of the history of international relations at Utrecht University. Houtzagers works at the Council of State.

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Madras High Court

Helen Anitha vs The Inspector Of Police on 10 October, 2018

BEFORE THE MADURAI BENCH OF MADRAS HIGH COURT

Dated: 10.10.2018

ORDERS RESERVED ON : 08.10.2018

Decree of the Minister for Legal Protection of 30 November 2020, no.3114150, establishing a Committee of independent experts on the investigation of domestic distance and adoption (Decree Establishing the Committee of Independent Experts on Domestic Distance and Adoption)

The Minister for Legal Protection,

In view of Section 2, subsection 1, of the Advisory Boards and Committees Remuneration Act;

Decision:

Article 1 Definitions

THE OIREACHTAS CHILDREN’S Committee is set to invite the chairperson of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes to appear before it.

The committee made the decision at a private meeting yesterday and plans to send a letter to Judge Yvonne Murphy, the chair of the three-person commission, in the coming days.

Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman, whose department oversaw the release of the report, will be invited to attend a separate meeting with the committee.

Survivors will also be asked to attend another hearing so they can raise any questions or concerns they have.

The report, spanning 2,865 pages, details the experiences of women and children who lived in 14 mother and baby homes and four county homes between 1922 and 1998. It was published on 12 January, nearly six years after the commission was first set up.

MUMBAI: A city couple on Friday alleged the child welfare committee (CWC) took away their “adopted” infant and kept her in “illegal detention”. They have sought orders to be reunited with the baby, now aged two.

The childless couple said they had adopted a newborn from a single woman under provisions of Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act (HAMA) through an adoption deed in January 2019. That June, CWC filed a criminal case against them and “immediately took” the child from their legal custody, they alleged. Currently, the child is being looked after by a trust that runs a “specialised adoption agency”, said their petition.

CWC is a statutory body set up under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection ) Act as an authority to deal with children in care of protection. The petition alleged CWC has acted “arbitrarily” and “high-handedly” out of “mere ignorance of law” six months after the child was “adopted”. Parting the child has deprived her of her fundamental right to life as well as “love and affection of the adoptive parents,’’ said the couple.

The couple filed a habeas corpus petition (to seek production of somebody from illegal detention or custody) through advocate Siddharth Jagushte and senior counsel Raja Thakare. The advocates mentioned it before a Bombay high court bench of Justices S S Shinde and Manish Pitale at a virtual hearing on Friday. The biological mother, represented by advocate Tusshar Nirbhavane, used to work as a domestic help and had entered into the ‘adoption deed’’, is the contention. The couple said they performed a handing over ceremony for the child.

Thakare said two important legal questions are involved, including whether adoption under HAMA can be “trifled with’’ when JJ Act recognises it and if Section 80 can be invoked when a valid adoption deed exists.

The Supreme Court on Thursday adjourned hearing on a petition filed by Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay seeking removal of anomalies in the grounds of adoption and guardianship and making them uniform for all citizens.

The matter was listed before the bench headed by the Chief Justice S.A. Bobde. The Court told the petitioner’s lawyer that a similar matter was dismissed in 2019. The Court asked petitioner to refer to that order and come back next week. Senior Advocate Anjana Prakash appeared for the petitioner. The matter will be considered next week.

The Court has directed to list the matter next week along with record of Writ Petition (Civil) No. 598 of 2019. Justice A.S. Bopanna and Justice V. Ramasubramanian were also part of the bench who passed the order.

The petition has been filed by BJP leader and spokesperson Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, who sought directions to declare the grounds of adoption and guardianship under different acts based on different religions per se as discriminatory.

The petitioner has submitted that Several acts such as Juvenile Justice Act, 2000, Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, The Guardians and Wards Act 1890, Hindu Minority and Guardianship act and personal laws of Muslims Christians and Parasis contain different provisions for adoption and guardianship, which are against gender equality, dignity of women and children.

The Supreme Court on Thursday adjourned hearing on a petition filed by Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay seeking removal of anomalies in the grounds of adoption and guardianship and making them uniform for all citizens.

The matter was listed before the bench headed by the Chief Justice S.A. Bobde. The Court told the petitioner’s lawyer that a similar matter was dismissed in 2019. The Court asked petitioner to refer to that order and come back next week. Senior Advocate Anjana Prakash appeared for the petitioner. The matter will be considered next week.

The Court has directed to list the matter next week along with record of Writ Petition (Civil) No. 598 of 2019. Justice A.S. Bopanna and Justice V. Ramasubramanian were also part of the bench who passed the order.

The petition has been filed by BJP leader and spokesperson Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, who sought directions to declare the grounds of adoption and guardianship under different acts based on different religions per se as discriminatory.

The petitioner has submitted that Several acts such as Juvenile Justice Act, 2000, Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, The Guardians and Wards Act 1890, Hindu Minority and Guardianship act and personal laws of Muslims Christians and Parasis contain different provisions for adoption and guardianship, which are against gender equality, dignity of women and children.