A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Thursday, February 23, 2017
India: Orphanage shut down for selling babies, 18 arrested
A newborn baby boy is weighed on a scale at a government hospital in Mumbai, India. Source: AP.
POLICE in eastern India have
shut down an orphanage and arrested its owner for illegally selling
babies to childless couples, and were investigating whether the adoption
racket was part of a wider human trafficking operation, officials said
on Tuesday.
The orphanage in the city of Jalpaiguri in West Bengal, run by a non
profit organisation, sold at least two dozen children for adoption,
police said.
“What is shocking is that the head of the (orphanage) was also running a
shelter for destitute women and selling their babies,” Rashmi Sen of
the West Bengal state women and child development ministry told the
Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“Ongoing investigations will also probe if the women were trafficked to the home to keep the adoption racket going.”
The weekend raids come three months after 13 babies were rescued and
skeletons of two other infants found near the port city of Kolkata.
Eighteen people, including doctors, midwives and the owners of charities
and clinics, were arrested, suspected of taking babies from women
immediately after they had given birth and telling them their children
were stillborn.
“There are at least 17 children who were housed in this home (in
Jalpaiguri) who are untraceable,” Subodh Bhattacharjee of the Jalpaiguri
child welfare committee told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“They were giving children for adoption without our knowledge, violating laid down guidelines.”
Police said the West Bengal orphanage was using forged documents, fake
stamps and certificates to sell the babies and had been warned multiple
times by the government in the past.
The orphanage was registered with the Central Adoption Resource
Authority and is the only one in Jalpaiguri district permitted to put up
children for adoption.
The babies were being sold for 100,000-200,000 rupees (US$1,500-3,000).
“Our own enquiry last year revealed that the children had not been
entered into the government system, which mandates recording of every
abandoned child,” Sen said.
“In January we moved 15 children from the orphanage to other homes for
their safety. They were all below the age of five, some just a few
months old.”
Baby trafficking is becoming an organised crime in India, experts say.
“These incidents are gross violations of child rights in both letter and
spirit of the existing laws,” said Mohua Chatterjee of human rights
group Child Rights and You.
“Despite the guidelines and instruments available under the law, the
technicalities of adoption process still remains a grey area for the
prospective parents, who due to lack of proper knowledge often fall prey
to the evildoers.”
Reports of human trafficking in India increased
25 per cent in 2015 compared to the year before, with more than 40 per
cent of cases involving children, according to government crime data. – Reuters