Child adoption row: Congress calls it deliberate ‘human trafficking’

PTI, Nov 24, 2021, 3:02 PM IST

Thiruvananthapuram: The opposition Congress in Kerala on Wednesday accused Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of ”conspiring” to facilitate the ”trafficking” of the child of former SFI leader Anupama Chandran to neighboring Andhra Pradesh in the name of adoption, without her consent.

Attacking the CPI(M)-led government and the party leadership over the issue, the Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, V D Satheesan alleged that the Chief Minister was using silence as his weapon nowadays to avoid commenting on controversial issues, especially those involving him.

His statement came a day after a DNA test report confirmed that Anupama Chandran and her husband Ajith were biological parents of the baby, whose adoption sparked a row in the southern state.

Despite knowing that the infant’s mother was in search of him, the Kerala State Council for Child Welfare (KSCCW), of which the CM is the President, and the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) had put the child up for adoption and shifted him to another state, he alleged.

”The shifting of the child to Andhra Pradesh was a conspiracy with the knowledge of the Chief Minister, his cabinet colleagues, the CPI(M) secretary, and other leaders. Speaking it is a case of deliberate human trafficking,” he told reporters here. Rules and regulations to put a child up for adoption are rigid in the country but, the state agency had violated all procedures from the beginning in the case of Chandran’s baby, the leader said.

Listing out various ‘flaws’ committed by the KSCCW and CWC, the Congress leader also alleged that the agencies had earlier conducted the DNA test of another baby and even mentioned the wrong gender in the records to mislead the woman and cover up the issue.

The authorities have informed the couple that the DNA test on the baby and the couple conducted at the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) have returned positive.

After being informed of the test result, the couple went to the Nirmala Sishu Bhavan here under the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to see the baby.

The one-year-old boy was in the foster care of a couple in Andhra Pradesh and was brought back here on Sunday.

On November 18, the CWC issued an order directing the KSCCW to bring the child back to Kerala.

A team led by KSCCW officials and comprising an escort of a Special Juvenile Police Unit received the child from the adoptive parents in Andhra Pradesh on Saturday and brought him to Kerala. Anupama Chandran (22) and her partner Ajith have been protesting in front of the KSCCW office at Thycaud here for some days, demanding to get their child back.

The woman’s allegation that her child was forcibly taken away from her by her father, a local CPI(M) leader, triggered a political controversy following which the government had ordered a departmental probe into the incident.

Anupama had accused her parents of forcibly taking away her newborn child from her soon after its birth a year ago and alleged that though she had complained about it to the police several times since April, they were reluctant to register a case against her family members.

However, the Peroorkkada police here have said a case was registered against six people — her parents, sister, sister’s husband, and two of his father’s friends — and that the delay happened as they were awaiting legal opinion.

Last month, a family court stayed the adoption process of the child and directed the police to submit a detailed report on the matter.