Bombay High Court grants US couple custody of 2 kids

The Bombay high court on Wednesday paved way for an American couple to adopt two Indian children who were abandoned by their biological mother in 2012.

Though a Canadian couple of Indian origin wanted to adopt these children and the adoption process for the 9-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl was almost over in 2014, the biological mother of these children had approached the high court to regain their custody.

After conducting a DNA test and completion of the due process, the court had allowed the mother the custody of her children but she did not take the children with her. The Child Welfare Committee (CWC) then approached the high court seeking permission to give put the children up for adoption again.

The CWC’s application came up for hearing before Justice Gautam Patel who after perusing all the details granted permission for the US-based couple to adopt the children.

In his order passed on April 27, the judge observed, “I have before me today what I can only describe as an utterly heart-rending situation. There are two minors who have, for the better part of their childhood, been footballed between their birth mother, one agency, another agency, been once previously placed for adoption only to see that possible dream evaporate and have now been suggested for adoption again. Their bond with their mother, if it existed, has broken.”

He further observed, “It is difficult to even begin to imagine the kind of trauma these children must have suffered. After all they were not abandoned at birth, but at the ages of five and three, when they must have had at least some degree of awareness.” Justice Patel also added, “Sufficient liberty was given to the birth mother even at the cost of the welfare of the children, and certainly to the disappointment and trauma caused to the previous adoptive parents, who travelled frequently to India to bond with these children. She squandered that opportunity. I will not permit this to be repeated.”

Speaking further about the mother’s abandonment, the judge said, “Why did she not take it Why did she never meet the children after December 2014 We may never know and it is now for the best, and certainly for the best for these two children, that it stays that way. To reverse the April 2015 order of the high court forfeiting the mother’s rights on the children would be to subject them to a horror they have done nothing to deserve.”