India: Illegal Adoptions Declares the Supreme Court

The hearing in the PIL filed in 2012 took a new twist on May 7 when a bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi barred an Indian-origin Canadian woman from adopting a child from the country after it emerged from records that her Power of Attorney holder had bribed the then CARA chairman J.K. Mittal in 2006.

The development assumes significance at a time when the new rules in the amended Juvenile Bill gives preference to overseas Indians or people of Indian origin in inter-country adoption.

Rejecting the woman’s plea for adoption, the bench shot back: “… when the person who represented the woman who wants adoption in courts is involved in a criminal case and that too relating to giving of bribe to the chairperson of CARA, we are of the view that the petitioner would not be entitled to any relief or order from any court in the country as far as the adoption is concerned.”

Says Kunal Cheema, the lawyer for petitioner NGO: “a massive adoption racket is operating in the country involving Indian and foreign adoption agencies. While thousands of Indians couples wait endlessly, foreign nationals, mostly from Europe and the US, easily adopt Indian children, year after year, mostly by fraudulent means aided by unscrupulous agencies. The CARA turns a blind eye in most cases”.

By an estimate, about 600 to 800 Indian children are adopted by foreigners every year despite allegations that these children are often abused after adoption and that large-scale rackets fraudulently obtain consent from parents whose children are taken away.

A lack of guidelines on international adoptions, along with the government’s denial have allowed the scandal to grow to humongous proportions over the years.

“There were cases where signs were obtained by falsely saying they were needed for admission purposes or higher education,” alleged Sakhee director Anjali Pawar.”