Adoption agencies in sorry state
NEWDELHI: An inspection of 15 specialised adoption agencies (SAAs) by the ministry of women and child development (WCD) and the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), carried out in January and February, has discovered glaring irregularities, including premature deaths, unhygienic conditions, and even children not being accounted for in some cases.
SAAs house orphaned and abandoned children below the age of six meant for adoption. There are 460 of them around India. The homes inspected were in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana, West Bengal, Punjab, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Under the Juvenile Justice Act (JJ Act), SAAs, which are run by private agencies or NGOs in most cases, have to be registered with the government’s Child Adoption Resource Information and Guidance System (CARINGS) for intra- and inter-country adoptions and provide details of each child admitted to the agency. The portal is run by CARA, the government’s nodal agency monitoring adoption in the country.
“We were getting complaints that the credentials of some of the SAAs are not of required standard. So the WCD ministry ordered an inspection,” said Deepak Kumar, CEO, CARA.
“To start with, we decided to inspect 15 against whom there were the most complaints.”
The team was taken aback when it visited Jodhpur’s Navjeevan Sansthan, said a CARA official involved in drafting the inspection report who asked not to be identified. “The register showed that 14 children had died between December 2016 and January
EXPERTS SAY THAT THOUGH CARA GIVES ADOPTION LICENSE TO SAAS, THE STATE AUTHORITIES HAVE TO RENEW IT FROM TIME TO TIME AFTER REGULAR INSPECTION
2018. We are now seeking an explanation as to how these children had died,” said the official.
The team also found that of the 325 children who were admitted to this SAA from 2008 to 2018 and registered with CARINGS, the details of 97 children were not available.
Rajendra Parihar, owner of Navjeevan Sansthan, confirmed the deaths but said that they were mostly children born prematurely. “These children were underweight; we took them to the hospital and tried our best but could not save them.”
He also denied that there were children whose details were missing. “There is no irregularity. We provided all details to the inspection team. They checked records of 15 years and found everything in order.”
The inspection report, a copy of which has been seen by Hindustan Times, comes in the backdrop of the Jharkhand incident in July, when four newborns were allegedly sold by two sisters from a centre of Nirmal Hriday, a shelter home for destitute women run by the Missionaries of Charity.