Bombay HC allows US-based couple to adopt two children abandoned by mother

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has cleared the decks for adoption of two minor children, who were abandoned by their biological mother in 2012, by a US-based couple. The children’s adoption was held up since 2013, as the biological mother, after initially abandoning them, sought their custody when the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) put the kids up for adoption by a Canada-based couple of Indian origin. In 2014, the High Court stayed the adoption process and allowed the biological mother to take her children. But, when the mother failed to do so and did not even meet them after the High Court order, the CWC once again approached the HC and sought permission to allow adoption by another couple, who were based in the United States. [caption id=“attachment_2758770” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Bombay High Court. File photo. IBNLive[/caption] Justice Gautam Patel, on 27 April, after perusing the facts of the case and interviewing the minor children— a boy aged nine and a girl aged seven—permitted the US-based couple to adopt them. “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, was broken,” the court said. “It is difficult to even begin to imagine the kind of trauma these young 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 noted. “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 traveled frequently to India to bond with these children. She squandered that opportunity. I will not permit this to be repeated,” he said.