Indian Supreme Court agrees to hear case by NGOs seeking moratorium on foreigners adopting Indian children

“The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine a public interest litigation (PIL) which sought a probe into an alleged “international adoption racket” operating from India.

Mail Today had on February 8 reported that while nearly 5,000 issueless parents in the country  have been on the waiting list for many years for adoption, a large number of people from foreign countries, mostly of Europe and US are flying down and managing to adopt Indian children – 600 to 800 of them – every year easily by paying lakhs of rupees per child.

“The issue is sensitive and important,” a bench of justice Ranjana Desai told petitioner NGOs Advait Foundation and Sakhee.

Their PIL sought a moratorium on foreigners adopting Indian children, alleging children who are being illegally taken away to foreign countries faced post-adoption abuse because of the absence of any inter-country adoption guidelines in place.

Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar urged the Bench to dismiss the PIL contending the same petitioners had filed a similar petition in the Bombay High Court.

But the NGOs argued that the petition pending there was seeking a CBI probe into particular adoption cases and not a PIL.

The SG also contended that detailed guidelines formulated on the basis of SC judgment in Lakshmi Kant Pandey (1984) were being strictly followed.

“Anyway we will have the benefit of the guidelines framed by the Supreme Court earlier to use as a touchstone and let a clarification also be done on the proceedings in Bombay High Court. We shall examine the plea after two weeks,” the bench said.

The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), under the Women and Child Development Ministry, is the apex body which governs adoptions.

Alleging a “massive adoption racket”, NGO’s lawyers Amit Sharma and Kunal Cheema said CARA was permitting such adoptions in violation of SC’s guidelines, one of which was that preference should be given to Indian parents.”

 

Supreme Court agrees to hear case by NGOs seeking moratorium on foreigners adopting Indian children[Daily Mail 8/1/14 by Harish V Nair]

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