India Opens Online Registration For Non-Resident Indian PAPs as NGOs Take On “Massive Adoption Racket” UPDATED
US Department of State has the Following Announcement February 6:
http://adoption.state.gov/country_information/country_specific_alerts_notices.php?alert_notice_type=notices&alert_notice_file=india_6 and pasted below
“Notice: India Opens Online Registration for Non-Resident Indian Prospective Adoptive Parents Seeking Referral of Non-Special Needs Child
This is an update to our notice dated November 30, 2012, announcing a temporary suspension on the acceptance of new intercountry adoption applications by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and our notice dated March 28, 2013, announcing the partial lifting of the suspension for children classified by CARA as special needs.
CARA informed the U.S. Central Authority that effective February 3, 2014, Indian passport holders may register to adopt Indian children not classified as special needs (see CARA’s January 1, 2014, announcement). CARA will accept online registration from Enlisted Foreign Adoption Agencies (EFAAs) on behalf of non-resident Indians (NRIs) for this expanded group of eligible children. CARA will accept 50 registrations from Indian passport holders per month worldwide for non-special needs children on a first-come, first-served basis. At this time, CARA is not considering online registration for prospective adoptive parents of Indian origin who hold Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) or Person of Indian Origin (PIO) cards. There is no limitation on the number of registrations for children with special needs.
If you have any questions regarding this notice, please do not hesitate to contact us by phone at 1-888-407-4747 or e-mail us at adoptionUSCA@state.gov.”
Yet, Daily Mail has an article NGOs take on ‘massive adoption racket’: Foreigners are easily buying babies as Indian couples languish on the waiting list [Daily Mail 2/8/14 By Harish V Nair] taking on CARA.
“They may have everything in their lives, but not a child’s laughter.
Deep inside they nurture the hope that one day it will all change when they get to adopt a bundle of joy.
But for 5,000 childless couples in India, this hope dies every day as they wait endlessly even as foreign nationals, mostly from Europe and the US, easily adopt Indian children, year after year, sometimes by fraudulent means aided by unscrupulous agencies.
Under the garb of adoption it’s an international scandal where Indian children are actually bought for Rs 30 to Rs 40 lakh while the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), which is the apex body governing adoption and works under Union Women and Child Development Ministry, turns a blind eye even though it claims all rules are being enforced.
A growing scandal
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 typical denial mode have allowed the scandal to grow to humongous proportions over the years.
Needless to say, it has not helped the Indian parents who should be getting preference in case of an adoption as per the Supreme Court’s guidelines in the Lakshmi Kant Pandey (1984) case.
But all of that gets thrown out of the window even as unsuspecting mothers lose their children who they may never see again.
However, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) is now being heard by Supreme Court by NGOs Advait Foundation and Sakhee seeking a moratorium on foreigners adopting Indian children, alleging that many 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.
The PIL has put CARA under the scanner for allowing hundreds of our children to be bought off by wealthy foreigners in the last three years.
Lawyers Amit Sharma and Kunal Cheema, representing the NGOs, alleged that a “massive adoption racket was operating in the country involving Indian and foreign adoption agencies” and have sought a CBI probe.
They argued that CARA was permitting such adoptions in violation of the apex court’s guidelines in Lakshmi Kant Pandey (1984) case, one of which was that preference should be given to Indian parents.
“In some cases, parents searching for their children come to know much later that they have been fraudulently made to sign papers relinquishing their children and the papers have been put before the concerned courts for getting approval for inter-country adoption, passing on the ‘guardian’ status to foreign couples.
“There were cases where signs were obtained by falsely saying they were needed for admission purposes or higher education,” alleged Sakhee director Anjali Pawar.
“The price of a child in the international market is between Rs 30 and Rs 45 lakh, and surprisingly the beneficiaries of such acts are the adoption agencies and not the biological parents,” said Pawar, adding that the absence of any comprehensive law was encouraging miscreants to kidnap small children, and forge and fabricate relinquishment deeds and other documents to facilitate adoption of Indian children by foreigners.
Indians wait
“At present, there are more than 5,000 Indian families on the wait list for adopting a child, whereas 600 to 800 children are sent out of India annually in inter-country adoption,” the PIL said.
The petition said in many cases “the biological parents, who are stated to have relinquished their respective child, do not even know that such documents exist and that their child has been sent abroad in adoption and that they shall never be able to see their child again.”
Not surprisingly, the Centre, in an affidavit before the Supreme Court, vouches there is nothing illegal about it and “all guidelines are being followed.”
Opposing the PIL, in its affidavit CARA said efforts to contact the biological mothers have created a fear in their minds, especially the unwed mothers, who fearing disclosure of their identities would now abandon the children and dump them in the garbage bins, rather than relinquishing them to adoption agencies.
“The activists are playing with lives of innocent children. They have no right to investigate into the aspect of the paternity of the child and have no right to contact the biological parents,” CARA said.
“Confidentiality is required to be maintained as regards the child’s origin. If the right of a biological unwed mother to maintain the confidentiality of having given birth to an illegitimate child is not respected, the consequence would be that an unwed mother would prefer to abandon the child,” it said.
In its affidavit the CBI has pleaded helplessness, saying it has no machinery to ascertain as to how many agencies are involved, how many instances of such adoption occurred, and with its present strength it would be very difficult for it to conduct a probe of this magnitude.
The CBI has already registered some FIRs against some adoption agencies in Maharashtra and begun preliminary investigation leading to their closure.
The Supreme Court, which has sought the stand of CARA and the CBI on the issue, will take up the affidavits for hearing on March 3, the next date of hearing.”
REFORM Puzzle Pieces
“Alert: Reminder to Adoption Service Providers to Upload Prospective Adoptive Parents’ Documents to CARINGS Database
The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) has requested the Department of State’s assistance in reminding U.S. adoption service providers (ASPs) to upload dossier documents pertaining to prospective adoptive parents in CARA’s online database, CARINGS as soon as possible. This reminder pertains only to Authorized Foreign Adoption Agencies (AFAAs), those ASPs authorized by CARA to facilitate the adoption of Indian children by prospective adoptive parents through the intercountry adoption process. CARA is requesting dossier information for those prospective parents already registered in CARINGS.
The specific documents requested include;
1) Current family photograph/photograph of the person(s) adopting a child;
2) Birth certificate/proof of date of birth of the prospective adoptive parent(s);
3) Proof of residence (voter card, passport, current electricity bill, or telephone bill);
4) Proof of last year’s income (salary slip, income certificate issued by a government department, or income tax return);
5) Certificate from a licensed medical practitioner certifying that the prospective adoptive parents do not suffer from any chronic, contagious or fatal disease and are fit to adopt;
6) Police clearance certificate;
7) Marriage certificate, divorce decree, death certificate of spouse (whichever is applicable).
CARA notes that not all U.S. ASPs authorized by CARA have complied with its request to upload these documents by the February 28 deadline. CARA requires this documentation so that “seniority can be established among prospective adoptive parents and accordingly children could be made available to them for their referral.”
CARA has stated that, if the documents are not immediately uploaded, they will assume the prospective adoptive parents are no longer interested in adopting from India, and they will cancel the registration of prospective adoptive parents with incomplete dossiers.
Please email CARA directly at caradesk.wcd@nic.in should you have any questions concerning this request.
Please continue to monitor this website for updated information concerning intercountry adoptions in India.”
:
This is an update to our notice dated February 6, 2014, announcing that India opened online registration for Non-resident Indian prospective adoptive parents seeking to adopt Indian children not classified as special needs (see CARA’s January 1, 2014, announcement).
CARA informed the U.S. Central Authority that effective March 3, 2014, CARA will accept online registration from Enlisted Foreign Adoption Agencies (EFAAs) on behalf of individuals who have Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) status for this expanded group of eligible children (See CARA’s February 28, 2014, announcement). CARA will accept 50 registrations per month worldwide for non-special needs children on a first-come, first-served basis. At this time, CARA is not considering online registration for prospective adoptive parents of Indian origin who have Person of Indian Origin (PIO) status. There is no limitation on the number of registrations for children with special needs.
If you have any questions regarding this notice, please do not hesitate to contact us by phone at 1-888-407-4747 or e-mail us atadoptionUSCA@state.gov.”
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