Nuns Convicted Of Forgery In Adoption-For-Money Case
Nuns Convicted Of Forgery In Adoption-For-Money Case
Published Date: September 1, 2005
A court in southern India has convicted three Catholic nuns and seven other people of cheating and forgery in a child adoption case.
On Aug. 30, Judge L. Kedara Chary, first additional metropolitan sessions judge of Hyderabad, sentenced each of the 10 to six months´ imprisonment and a fine of 2,000 rupees (about US$45).
The nuns belong to the Jesus, Mary and Joseph congregation, which has managed Tender Loving Care Home since 1996. The orphanage is in Hyderabad, the Andhra Pradesh state capital, 1,500 kilometers south of New Delhi.
Since 2001, the orphanage has been fighting the state´s welfare department and voluntary groups over the care of some destitute children. The Andhra Pradesh government had tightened adoption rules that year, following a scandal involving trafficking in orphans. Police raided several children´s homes including the nuns´ orphanage.
Charges the state´s Crime Investigation Department filed in court in 2002 accused 13 officers and staff of Tender Loving Care Home of criminal conspiracy to send children abroad for monetary gain.
The court acquitted the provincial of the nuns´ congregation, and two of the other 12 defendants fled, both staff members of the orphanage.
UCA News contacted Sister Tresa Maria, one of the three nuns among the 10 people convicted of some of the charges against them. “I am not bothered. I will appeal to the High Court,” she said. Sister Maria, 65, added that she was confident of winning the case because she was not at fault.
The nun pointed out that she was acquitted of five of the seven allegations the court considered against her. Of the remaining two charges, she explained, one relates to receiving money but does not mention any specific amount.
The other allegation relates to the case of three unwed mothers and their children. The charge sheet alleges that the entries in the orphanage records were falsified. Sister Maria insisted that the nuns did so only to protect the identity of the women.
She even cited the judge as saying after he pronounced his judgment that he regretted having to do so. She said she found consolation in her tribulations in the Bible. “I can be called a criminal and convicted if I kill children, but I have only saved many a child,” she declared.
Sister Maria blamed her lawyer, who she alleged was a sympathizer of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian people´s party), which was an ally of a regional party that ruled the state when the case was filed. She held the lawyer responsible for prolonging the case.
The case has affected the orphanage, which used to have more than 60 orphaned children under its care but now has 30 children and a reduced staff.
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