IN MARCH, AN orphanage on the outskirts of Hyderabad in Ameenpur asked a teenage girl, who alleged she was raped, to leave the institution following the lockdown. Police said that the 14-year-old, whose parents had died years ago, may have been subject to repeated sexual abuse at the orphanage. Finally, she was forced to return to her relatives who had put her in the orphanage in 2015. Shortly, while at her relatives’ home, she had to be admitted to a hospital due to the injuries she had sustained from repeated rapes. The girl died in a government hospital last month, bringing to the focus, yet again, multiple jeopardies children face in orphanages in India, especially when relatives and even their parents are too uncaring to pay a visit even after years.

All this is an outcome, avers Pune-based child-rights activist Smriti Gupta, of our officials not “defining the word ‘caring’ by family” of children forced to live in government-run or privately operated childcare centres, also called shelters and orphanages. The inadequate definition of ‘caring’ means that children are not freed from the clutches of their indifferent parents and not placed for adoption. While it is true that poor parents, especially migrant workers, do place their children in shelters and maintain warm ties with them, Gupta rues the policy of prioritising parents and not the kids.

Gupta is the CEO of the meaningfully titled charity organisation ‘Where Are India’s Children?’ Her argument is that the mindset of lawmakers and officials is to focus on what parents want, notwithstanding their dubious record as uncaring ones. Her organisation’s title verbalises her own vision and purpose. “I had made up my mind as a student that I would not have children of my own, but would adopt them. I didn’t want to marry either, but then when I was doing my master’s in electrical engineering, I met my husband and Cupid struck. I told him we would adopt children, and he readily agreed,” says this former US-based employee of Wikimedia Foundation, the parent company of Wikipedia. Both her children are adopted. It was when she decided to adopt the second one, after the first one turned three, that she realised it was not a cumbersome process, mostly because new rules stipulated that prospective parents would be allotted options by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), a statutory body that falls under the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Yet, in the CARA pool, there were very few children compared with those living in childcare institutions. So, while many parents want to adopt, there are very few children available. That was the trigger for Gupta to launch her NGO to help identify more children who needed to get adopted and live with normal families. “The Hyderabad girl should have been in the adoption pool,” she says with a whiff of regret.

Over 30,000 parents in India are waiting to adopt while the ‘pool’ has barely 2,000 children. According to the Government, the CARA, which maintains this pool, functions as the nodal body for adoption of Indian children and is mandated to monitor and regulate intra-country and inter-country adoptions. Its website says, ‘CARA is designated as the Central Authority to deal with inter-country adoptions in accordance with the provisions of the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption, 1993, ratified by the government of India in 2003.’ The new rules came into force in 2013.

I am fortunate to have grown up in a home with two loving parents. They gave me the care, stability, and training I needed to succeed. But not every child is so fortunate. Across our country, and especially abroad, there are countless children who have no mom, no dad, no family, and no relatives to take them in and care for them. These children often reside in deplorable conditions, in orphanages, and as wards of the state.

Americans have always had a heart for these children. For decades, Americans have led the world in welcoming orphans from abroad into a forever family. As a result, there are more than 150,000 children adopted from foreign countries growing up in America today. These children and their adoptive families are examples of America at its best. Some of them are now part of my extended family; others go to church with Gayle and me.

Unfortunately, this great legacy of compassion is at risk. U.S. adoptions from foreign countries have sharply declined in recent years. In 2004, Americans adopted 23,000 children from foreign countries. Last year, that number fell below 3,000 – an 87 percent drop over 15 years. One reason for the decline is that some countries, like Russia, have shut their doors to adoptive parents. But the most troubling cause of the decline comes from within our own government.

State Department Is Biased Against Adoption

For years, the U.S. State Department and its adoption accrediting entity have been hostile to intercountry adoption. They have obstructed the adoption process with fees and red tape. And they have put crushing regulations on adoption-providing agencies, making it almost impossible to stay in business. The result has been devastating. Over the last year and a half, more than 30 adoption agencies have stopped providing intercountry adoptions, and some have had to shut down completely. Tragically, this means more orphans each year will remain in institutions rather than with a loving family.

The European Commission is to investigate allegations about the Irish State’s treatment of women in mother and baby homes.

It is also to investigate allegations about the way the State has treated survivors of those homes.

Earlier this year, the Coalition of Mother and Baby Homes Survivors in Ireland petitioned the commission for an investigation.

It called for an investigation into “breaches of human rights” that occurred in the homes and for an examination of “the wider official system” that “facilitated” forced adoptions of children from those homes.

"The past is not finished with us"

On 7 September 2020, the Parliament’s Social and Home Affairs Committee has stated the following question no. 711 (general part) to the Minister of Social Affairs and the Interior, which is hereby answered. The question was asked at the request of Pernille Skipper (EL).

Question 711:

“Will the Minister state what the Minister knows about the adoptions from Chile to Denmark that took place between 1976 – 1991, including on what basis the adoptions took place and knowledge of any errors in the cases?”

Reply:

I can state that, on the basis of my inquiries to the National Board of Appeal, I have been continuously informed about the problem and its handling, since I became aware at the beginning of the year of the suspicion that has arisen in relation to adoptions from Chile in the 1970s and -80s. The Agency is the supervisory authority in the area of ??adoption and also processes specific inquiries from adoptees with suspected illegal conditions in connection with the adoption.

In a judgment which paves way for child adoption by Indian diaspora from the country, Punjab and Haryana high court has held that NRIs applying under the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act (HAMA)-1956 don’t have to undergo the rigorous process set under Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA).

The high court bench of justice Jaishree Thakur also held that for adoption covered under the personal law — applicable to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains — within the country, the adoptee won’t even need the CARA certification. There is no personal law for adoption by Muslims.

CARA is a statutory body for adoption of Indian children and is mandated to monitor and regulate in-country and inter-country adoptions. CARA was established under the Juvenile Justice Act (JJA)-2015 after the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. Under CARA, adoption can be made by person of any belief.

The ruling was delivered in a plea wherein a two-year-old girl adopted by an NRI couple was denied passport. Born as one of the twins to a Jalandhar couple in 2017, she was adopted by her natural mother’s NRI sister as per Sikh rites performed at a local gurdwara for which a certificate was also issued. In November 2018, they signed an adoption deed under HAMA, following which the adoptive parents applied for the girl’s passport, but it was rejected by authorities stating that a no-objection certificate (NOC) from CARA was mandatory, said the family’s lawyer Sukhwinder Singh Nara.

The court said Section 56 (3) of the JJA stipulates that the provisions of the law shall not apply to adoption of children under HAMA. The said adoption cannot be challenged on the ground that the same should have been made under JJA, which itself states that a valid adoption of a minor child under HAMA is irreversible and cannot be revoked, the bench said.

Mandira Bedi on adopting a four-year-old and the challenges that come with it

When Raj and I were getting married 20 years ago, I told him that I not only wanted to have a biological child, but also

wanted to offer another child the same opportunities, hope and a new life. Both of us, however, got caught up with our own

careers and that plan was soon forgotten.

In fact, it took a while before I became a mother, in 2011, when my son Veer was born and biologically, I was certain, I

Surat: It was borne out of their love, but sadly the foetus did not get its share of love from its unwilling parents. Born into the world of deceit, the newborn was almost on the verge of being lost forever in the web of treachery had it not been saved by Navsari’s District Child Protection Unit.

The baby was delivered by an unwed 18-year-old woman, who was cheated by her lover who deserted her after she became pregnant.

However, the parents of the woman wanted to give the child up for adoption illegally to any willing people. But, before they could act, the incident came to the child protection unit’s knowledge that rescued it in the nick of time.

“We received a tip-off about the 18-year-old girl giving birth to a child in a hospital in Navsari town. We also came to know that her parents were planning to give it for adoption illegally. We immediately visited the family at the hospital and probed the case,” said an official.

“She was minor when she fell in love with a youth and had physical relations. However, when she realized about her pregnancy and approached her boyfriend, he did not respond to her. She also kept it as a secret from her parents, but her mother suspected it and took her to a doctor where they came to know she was six months pregnant. Worrying about the societal backlash after knowing about their unmarried daughter’s pregnancy, they decided to give the child in adoption,” the official added.

Police questioning suspects, checking CCTV footage

The abduction of a beggar’s three-year-old daughter in Nanjangud earlier this week, about four years after her elder son was similarly kidnapped from the pavement near the Srikanteshwara Temple, has set the police on the path of a fresh investigation into a possible case of child trafficking.

The investigation into the abduction of Parvathi’s eight-month-old son in April 2016 had helped the police uncover a well-organised child trafficking racket, which also involved sale of new-borns from two private maternity hospitals in Mysuru to childless couples.

In her complaint to the Nanjangud police, Parvathi said she was approached by an unidentified man on Thursday asking her to give away her daughter to a childless couple. Minutes after she reproached the stranger and threw away the currency note he handed to her, Parvathi found her daughter missing. She lodged a complaint after she was unable to locate her.

Refusing to rule out the involvement of child traffickers in the abduction, the Nanjangud police’s investigation also involves looking for the whereabouts of the accused involved in the 2016 case in which a chargesheet had been filed and trial is under way.

It was a dilemma: Return a five-year-old to his mother with drug-riddled prison records or let his foster parents adopt him.

In a rare move, District Judge Shobha Nair overruled the objections and allowed the adoption based on the Adoption of Children Act.

But the natural parents have appealed against her order, she said while giving the grounds for her decision last week.

The judge said: "The straitened choice before the court was this - to endorse the request of foster parents to adopt a five-year-old twin boy they had been looking after since birth or to return him to his natural mother who is soon to complete an imprisonment term."

She added: "I allowed the adoption."

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana high court has made it clear that a child who is being taken to a far off country by way of adoption needs to be protected and added that background checks by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and its equivalent authority in the foreign country are imperative in the case of an inter-country adoption.

Deciding the ongoing battle over adoption of a minor boy to a couple based in the United States under “pressure” of his grandparents after his father’s death, the Punjab and Haryana high court directed the adoptive parents to hand over the custody of the child to his natural mother.

The high court held that the adoption deed shown to be executed on December 3, 2019 is a highly suspicious document as regards its authenticity and secondly, the intention to give the child for adoption was at a time when the petitioner could not be said to be in a stable mental state due to the recent death of her husband.

As the child remained with the adoptive couple, the high court observed that the couple must have been attached with the child, thus it would be appropriate in the interest of the child if the adoptive mother hands over the child by first familiarising him with his natural mother. The process has been ordered to be completed over a period of two weeks

The matter had reached the high court in January this year after a Chandigarh-based woman (name withheld to protect identity) filed a habeas corpus petition alleging that her minor son had been forcibly taken away from her custody through “forceful” adoption by her in-laws after her husband’s death. She said her father in law and mother in law had called her to Patiala in September 2019 and forced her to sign some documents after which her son was given in adoption to the USA-based couple. She approached the HC after the Chandigarh police failed to take any action on her complaint.