The Karnataka High Court has said that a son, born in 'Batil' marriage (void-ab-initio) under Mohammadan Law, is illegitimate and does not possess any right of succession under the law. A single judge bench of Justice V Srishananda allowed the appeal filed by one Nabisab Agnnamani (original plaintiff) and set aside the order of the first appellate court which granted half share of...

MEA’s statement came as opposition MPs stepped up campaign for return of child to India, who has been taken from parents due to allegations of abuse 

Amidst calls by the opposition for the government to take up the case of Baby Ariha Shah, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday said that it had summoned the German Ambassador over the 2-year-old child’s situation in foster care in Germany.

The disclosure came a day after Ariha’s mother Dhara Shah met with Members of Parliament to appeal for help, and at the very least for India to press for Ariha to be transferred to a foster home in India, where she can be raised as an Indian and amidst her own Jain community.

‘Cultural rights infringed’

“At a minimum we believe this child’s cultural rights and rights as an Indian are being infringed upon by her being placed in German foster care,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi told reporters, adding that the 2021 case was being accorded “high priority”. 

No fewer than 61 meters of thousands of adoption files have been destroyed by the Ministry of Justice. That should not have been allowed, the Inspectorate for Government Information and Heritage recently ruled. For adopted children who are searching for their roots, it is yet another proof that they have little to expect from this government. That really needs to change.

The destroyed files contain information about couples who wanted to adopt a child and about how adopted children eventually ended up in the Netherlands. It is yet another mistake in the scandal-ridden adoption practice, about which the Joustra committee already cracked down on two years ago. The committee painted a shocking picture of a derailed sector in which the wishes of adoptive parents outweighed the interests of the child to be adopted. Financial incentives open the door to child trafficking, theft and corruption. In other words, abuses that the Dutch government knew about, but did not take action against.

So far, The Hague's response to that report has been twofold. The previous government generously acknowledged that there had been decades of failure in monitoring adoption practices. That is why foreign adoption is further limited and supervision is tightened.

After the judge, the matter is not over yet

You would think: anyone who sees their own failure so clearly would do everything they can to pick up the pieces. But that is not the reality in The Hague: it is mainly characterized by an often very painful jurisprudence and stinginess for the adopted children. One adoption lawsuit follows another, in which the government is regularly held liable for damage suffered. And even then, after the judge the matter is usually not over. For example, outgoing Minister Weerwind (adoption) has appealed against the court ruling that orders the state to pay compensation for an illegal adoption from Brazil. In another adoption case, which had already ended up in court, the government appealed - because there too the state was ordered to pay compensation.

The Allahabad High Court has observed that a person below the age of 18 cannot be in a live-in relationship and this would be an act not only immoral but also illegal.

A bench of Justices Vivek Kumar Birla and Justice Rajendra Kumar made the observation in a recent judgment dismissing a petition filed by Ali Abbas, a 17-year-old boy, and his live-in partner Saloni Yadav, 19.

Bench observation

"There are several conditions for a live-in relation to be treated as a relation in nature of marriage and in any case, a person has to be major (above the age of 18 years), although he may not be of marriageable age (21 years). Hence, a child cannot have a live-in relationship and this would be an act not only immoral but also illegal," the bench observed.

"An accused who is below 18 years of age cannot seek protection on the ground of having a live-in relationship with a major girl and thus, he cannot seek quashing of the criminal prosecution against him as his/her activity is not permissible in law and is thus illegal," the bench added.

Two Danes from Thy thought they knew who they were, but some words on an old cassette tape changed everything.

The cassette tape was hidden for decades in a box in Thy.

It's a Sony tape with space for 45 minutes on each side, and on the B-side someone has written in pen on the yellowed sticker.

- Sophie, Sep. 77, it says.

She is 49 years old, and it is her bright child's voice that is heard singing and talking on the tape recordings.

A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite-Dere and Gauri Godse had directed the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to hand over the child’s custody, who was abandoned by the mother, to the father while hearing his plea.

Matters are decided within four corners of law and not on general perceptions, remarked the Bombay High Court when a mother, who had abandoned the child since she was a minor at the time of birth, opposed handing over of the custody to the biological father following a habeas corpus (produce the person in court) petition.

A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite-Dere and Gauri Godse had directed the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to hand over the child’s custody, who was abandoned by the mother, to the father while hearing his plea.

On Monday, additional public prosecutor Prajakta Shinde informed the court that the panel had passed a fresh order handing over the custody to the father.

Mother opposes child's custody given to father

The Telangana government has decided to adopt orphaned children in the state and provide them with all amenities on humanitarian grounds.

By Apoorva Jayachandran: Telangana Minister KT Rama Rao on Monday announced that the government would introduce an "Orphan Policy" under which it will adopt orphans in the state. The policy will serve the orphans in the state and they will be considered 'children of the state', said Telangana minister KT Rama Rao. This scheme will be introduced in the next cabinet session, said the minister.

The government will provide the children with all amenities on humanitarian grounds, much like the other schemes introduced by the Telangana government, said the minister.

The Telangana government in 2022 decided to introduce a Comprehensive Act aiming at providing better living conditions for orphaned children in the state.

The cabinet sub committee on Child Welfare and Women's Development then took a slew of important decisions which included declaring orphans as 'State Children' (Rashtra Biddalu) to extend all kinds of assistance to the orphans.

T. R. Fehrenbach’s classic history of the Korean War, This Kind of War (1962), famously calls the conflict “not a test of power—because neither antagonist used full powers—but a test of wills.”1 Originally subtitled A Study in Unpreparedness, it describes a US that learned the hard way what it took to fight a limited proxy war abroad. The first chapter, “Seoul, Saturday Night,” recounts the eve of the Korean War in anticipatory detail, with the pathos of retrospective knowledge. Surveying the American colony and its embassy bars, the narrator observes:

Over tax-free liquor, the colony laughed over Foster’s [John Foster Dulles] visit, and over the official who had been caught keeping North Korea’s Number One female spy. This man had even bought the woman a short-wave radio, and it was said the ROK’s would shoot her.

In spite of American influence, the ROK’s were still extremely brutal to leftist elements in their midst. Of course, they could not shoot the American official.

There had been a child, towheaded yet, the American wives in Seoul told each other. Some American couple would, of course, adopt it.2

The final sentence of this anecdote appears to end this story of sex, violence, and treason rather matter-of-factly. Though Fehrenbach often sums up other passages with quotable philosophical adages, this sentence is not one. As a line of free indirect discourse, it offers complexity rather than a voice of clear moral insight. Does it belong to the American wives, retaining the previous sentence’s whisper of scandal? Or has the omniscient historian picked up the thread here, returning us to a world of objective fact? And what about the “would” of “would adopt it”? If part of the local gossip, the adoption could range from speculative to probable; if spoken from the narrator’s present, it would be a fait accompli. Regardless, adoption is figured here as a thing taken for granted. As a geopolitical solution, its potential ramifications are dismissed in their very expression.

The vagueness of agency and moral reasoning in this sentence reflects the historical formalization of transnational adoption. Between the dual narrative temporalities of this sentence as character speech and historian’s narration, adoption of these “towheaded,” mixed-race children would transition from an informal possibility to an established practice of moving children across borders, from a collection of ad hoc processes to a matter overseen by social welfare professionals and immigration services. In the years to come, transnational adoption would prove an established option for modern family-making in the West and part of America’s humanitarian repertoire in subsequent conflicts. Korea, too, would continue to be one of the top “sending countries” of children to the US, with an estimated ten percent of all Korean Americans having been adopted from abroad.3

Woo request about dinner pensant intercountry adoption

Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Kumar Mishra told the Rajya Sabha on July 26 that 10,61,648 women above 18 years and 2,51,430 girls below 18 years went missing between 2019 and 2021 across the country.

Around 13.13 lakh girls and women went missing in the country in the three years between 2019 and 2021, with Madhya Pradesh accounting for the highest at nearly two lakhs, closely followed by West Bengal, the Ministry of Home Affairs has informed the Rajya Sabha.

Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Kumar Mishra told the Rajya Sabha on July 26 that 10,61,648 women above 18 years and 2,51,430 girls below 18 years went missing between 2019 and 2021 across the country. “In 2019, the number of girls and women who went missing was 82,084 and 3,42,168 respectively, while in 2020, 79, 233 girls and 3,44,422 women went missing,” he said.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) website, 82,619 girls went missing in 2019 and 49,436 were recovered. In the same year, 3,29,504 women went missing, and 1,68,793 were recovered. In 2020, 79,233 girls and 3,44,422 women went missing. Of these, 2,24,043 women were recovered while the number of girls recovered in 2019 was not given. “In 2021, 90,113 girls went missing and 58,980 were recovered. 3,75,058 women went missing and 2,02,298 were recovered,” the data shows.