Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Kumar Mishra told the Rajya Sabha on July 26 that 10,61,648 women above 18 years and 2,51,430 girls below 18 years went missing between 2019 and 2021 across the country.

Around 13.13 lakh girls and women went missing in the country in the three years between 2019 and 2021, with Madhya Pradesh accounting for the highest at nearly two lakhs, closely followed by West Bengal, the Ministry of Home Affairs has informed the Rajya Sabha.

Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Kumar Mishra told the Rajya Sabha on July 26 that 10,61,648 women above 18 years and 2,51,430 girls below 18 years went missing between 2019 and 2021 across the country. “In 2019, the number of girls and women who went missing was 82,084 and 3,42,168 respectively, while in 2020, 79, 233 girls and 3,44,422 women went missing,” he said.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) website, 82,619 girls went missing in 2019 and 49,436 were recovered. In the same year, 3,29,504 women went missing, and 1,68,793 were recovered. In 2020, 79,233 girls and 3,44,422 women went missing. Of these, 2,24,043 women were recovered while the number of girls recovered in 2019 was not given. “In 2021, 90,113 girls went missing and 58,980 were recovered. 3,75,058 women went missing and 2,02,298 were recovered,” the data shows.

• Lauren and Jacob Maloberti have been charged with the homicide of their son
• Prosecutors in Pennsylvania say Landon, 5, suffered three brain bleeds as a result of the beating 
• His siblings told police their mother would 'spank him with a wooden spoon'

A couple charged with beating their five year-old adopted son to death and leaving his brain 'obliterated' posted a fundraiser online to pay for their attorneys.

Lauren, 34, and Jacob Maloberti, 33, a corrections officer at Fayette State Correctional Center in Pennsylvania, are accused of violently abusing Landon, 5, causing blunt force trauma to his head and neck.

Police probed the couple after they brought the unresponsive schoolboy into AHN Hempfield Neighborhood Hospital on January 30, claiming he had been 'wobbly from COVID a month prior.'

On 26th July, the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court denied permission for abortion to a 17-year-old minor girl. In the order, a two-judges-bench comprising Justice Ravindra Ghuge and Justice YG Khobragade said the physical relation between the minor and the person accused of rape was consensual and the girl was aware of it. Furthermore, 24 weeks of pregnancy have passed. The girl completed 18 years of age on 29th July.

OpIndia accessed the judgment in the matter. The physical relationship between the boy and the girl was first established in December 2022, and they continued the relationship for months. As per the girl’s statement, she used to go to the accused’s hostel. In March/April 2023, the girl bought a self-pregnancy-test kit and learned that she was pregnant. However, she did not inform her parents about it.

On 1st July, her mother lodged an FIR that someone had taken away her daughter. The police traced the girl and the person accused and brought them to the police station. During the medical examination, it was revealed that the girl was pregnant. On 12th July, the radiologist stated the age of the fetus was 24 weeks and 3 days.

The court said if she did not want to keep the child, she should have approached the court before to take permission for an abortion.

Notably, abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy requires permission from the court. The mother filed the petition in the Bombay High Court on behalf of the minor. In the petition, the girl sought permission to abort the child under the POCSO act, saying she was a minor. The court gives permission to abort the child after 20 weeks only after considering threats to the life of the mother and child. In the petition, the mother claimed that giving birth to a child at this age would impact the girl’s mental health.

Getting necessities from a meagre income is a well-known fact, but have you heard of selling your blood to get an Apple sticker on the back of your smartphone? Sounds absurd, right? Well, a shocking incident took place in West Bengal where a couple went to even greater lengths and sold their baby to purchase an iPhone 14, all to create Instagram reels while travelling across Bengal.
This heart-wrenching incident occurred in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district. The West Bengal Police managed to apprehend the mother, identified as 'Sathi,' who was responsible for buying?? or selling?? the baby. However, the father, Jaydev Ghosh, is still at large, and the authorities are actively searching for him.

The incident came to light when concerned neighbours noticed some peculiar changes in the Ghosh family's behaviour. The eight-month-old baby had been missing for days, yet the parents displayed no signs of worry or anxiety. Additionally, their sudden acquisition of an iPhone 14, which costs no less than a lakh, raised suspicion among the neighbours, given that the family was known to have financial difficulties in the past.
Upon confronting the mother, she eventually confessed under pressure that she and her husband had indeed sold their baby to acquire money for purchasing the iPhone, enabling them to create Instagram reels showcasing their travels across various parts of Bengal.

Even more shocking, it was revealed that before attempting to sell their baby, the father had also tried to sell his seven-year-old daughter. The police have filed a case against the couple, and the mother who bought the baby is also facing criminal charges for human trafficking.

The investigation is still ongoing, and further details will be shared once the police delve deeper into the case.

This incident is not the first of its kind, unfortunately. In India, there have been multiple instances where parents have resorted to selling their children for materialistic gains. For instance, back in 2016, a Chinese couple sold their 18-day-old daughter for $3530 to purchase an iPhone.

In a tragic incident from March of this year, an Australian woman expressed her desire in court to exchange her unborn child for an iPhone. Subsequently, she committed an unthinkable act, locking two of her daughters inside a car for nine hours, leading to their demise.

These are the clear indicators and warning signs of why societies must work together to prevent such heinous acts and provide support to families facing financial hardships or mental health issues.

In a disturbing case in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, an orphanage was found illegally selling babies to childless couples. The head of the orphanage, who also operated a shelter for destitute women, was caught running the adoption racket. The babies were sold for amounts ranging from Rs. 100,000 to Rs. 200,000. This incident sheds light on the concerning issue of human trafficking, especially involving children, which is a growing crime problem in India. Authorities are taking action to combat such illegal activities and protect vulnerable children from exploitation.

According to The Times of India, a couple from the North 24 Parganas district sold their child to fund their purchase of an iPhone 14, likely because of its high-end camera capabilities.

Árný Aurangasri Hinriksson was among those who received the Order of the Eagle, as it is usually called, from the President of Iceland in Bessastadir on June 17.

She received a Knight's Cross for her work on behalf of adopted children and has helped around 35 Icelanders who have searched for their origins in Sri Lanka.

She moved from Sri Lanka to Ísafjörður in 1983, and there she is often called Auri. She then moved to Iceland with her husband Þóri Hinriksson, but he died in 2017. 

"It was not a conscious decision on my part to pour myself into looking for parents of adopted children in Iceland. Thirty years ago, people came to me and asked me for help in finding the parents of their daughter they had adopted from Sri Lanka. Little by little, this started to happen and there were more issues that I came to. To begin with, I was asked about this by people who had adopted the children, but later, when the adopted children grew up, they themselves started asking me for help when they wanted to know more about their origins," says Auri in an interview with Sunndagsblaðir Morgunblaðinn adding that over time the inquiries she received came from more countries. 

"I have not been able to attend to everyone who has come to me. On the one hand, this takes a lot of time, and on the other hand, it is costly. I tried to handle a few cases a year, but when I stopped working, and had finished my studies, I took on more cases. It also played a role in the fact that I began to spend more time in Sri Lanka and being there, more results were also achieved. I have done all this at my own expense, and of course you have to think about how much time and money you spend on this."

The Bombay High Court on Friday expressed apprehension that parents may abandon children, especially girl children, in order to get reservation benefits if at all any such reservation is created for abandoned children.

A division bench of Justices GS Patel and Neela Gokhale was hearing a plea by the NEST foundation, an NGO which urged the Court to direct the government to create reservation benefits for abandoned children at par with orphaned children. 

Opposing the proposition, Advocate General Dr Birendra Saraf argued that the if the State government grants such reservation to abandoned children, it may create a situation where children are deliberately abandoned to be included under the fold of reservation. 

“Orphanage is a matter of fact but abandonment can be created. It happens. This is the sad truth. The government does not want to create such a situation,” the Advocate General said. 

“This is our anxiety too. It will encourage abandonment, especially of girl children. We need to find a balance,” the bench replied. 

Where exactly does the law stand when it comes to adoptions by trans persons?

It was a petition by Mumbai-based transgender activist Gauri Sawant – better known for being featured in a 2017 Vicks ad – and others that led to the historic NALSA judgment of 2014, in which the Supreme Court recognised trans people as a 'third gender'.

In a shocking incident reported from India’s eastern state of West Bengal, a couple sold their eight-month-old baby for 200,000 Indian rupees or $2,400. The bizarre development is said to be from the state’s North 24 Parganas district.

A police investigation is going on, and the child’s mother, named Sathi, has already been arrested. However, the father of the baby, named Jaydev, is absconding.

How did they get caught?

Interestingly, it was the couple’s neighbours who sounded the alarm. Their neighbours in the Panihati Gandhinagar area grew suspicious after they noted the child’s absence and the sudden change in the couple’s behaviour.

The Bombay High Court on Friday expressed the need to train officials of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), displeased over the manner in which the committee declared a child free for adoption despite the biological father’s pleas for the child’s custody.The court said it would order records of the present case to be placed before the appropriate department for consideration. “Whether...

Deborah was brought to the Netherlands from Sri Lanka together with her twin brother. At least, that was the story. At the age of fifteen, she discovers that her alleged twin brother is not related to her at all. The real twin sister was too sick to fly, so two very young children were hastily swapped.

Deborah's fight to put this right appears to finally be coming to an end this summer. 

By Jeroen Pen

Deborah Hageman was adopted in 1985 and left Sri Lanka for the Netherlands. She is one of many: thousands of fellow sufferers travel the same route. The demand for adopted children rose to a record high at the end of the last century. There is a lot of money to be made from Sri Lankan babies and toddlers, so the supply should not lag behind. In a short time, an industry is created in which shrewd and malicious intermediaries call the shots. There is widespread tampering and fraud with birth data and adoption documents. Blinded by their desire to have children, Dutch adoptive parents turn a blind eye, or worse.

Something continues to gnaw at them, they are still too young to put their finger on it, but many of them feel that their adoption story is not right. Once the adopted children become teenagers, adolescents and adults, they start exploring. With often drastic consequences.