Orphanage in Andhra Pradesh sells its wards

Nirmala with rescued child and husband

What more could an unwed mother-to-be ask for? A Good Samaritan offering to adopt and take care of her child and help her live without any social stigma.

M. Mastanamma, a 25-year-old Scheduled Tribe casual labourer of Tada village on the Andhra Pradesh-Tamil Nadu border couldn't believe her luck when a social worker promised just that.

A day after Mastanamma delivered the baby in a private hospital in Sullurpet, the social worker, Thumma Sandayamma, asked her to sign some papers and took the child to Simon's Open Arm's Orphanage which she runs in Naidupet.

Sandayamma promised Mastanamma that she could call on her child occasionally. This was in April 1989 and when Mastanamma filed a complaint with the district collector in June she had still not seen her child. Sandayamma had "sold" the child to an American couple using the signed papers which proclaimed her to be the legal guardian.

Mastanamma's story is not an isolated instance. The state CID is investigating the case in which over two dozen poor and illiterate women in Andhra Pradesh's Nellore district have fallen prey to Sandayamma in the past five years.

Sandayamma and her husband John P. Survisesham have been arrested. She has admitted "securing" 29 children since 1990 of which 11 were sent abroad, three died and the rest are in India. Only one child was returned after the mother, Nirmala, sought the help of the village sarpanch .

An orphan herself, Sandayamma, a post-graduate in education, is the founder of the Woman and Child Welfare Social Service Association which was registered with the registrar of societies (No. 6589) on April 10 this year.

Her orphanage does not receive any funds from the Government but her frozen bank accounts and that of her husband, a schoolteacher, contained at least Rs 5 lakh.

After acquiring children, Sandayamma allegedly sent them to the Hyderabad-based Action for Social Development (ASD), a 14-year-old organisation permitted by the Union Ministry of Family Welfare to take up national and international adoptions, ASD has neither confirmed nor denied the allegation.

The CID report, when it comes, is likely to throw more light on the child adoption racket, but it won't be much comfort to those mothers whose children have been whisked abroad without their knowledge.