Gujarat court rejects woman's plea to renounce adoptive parents

AHMEDABAD: A Gujarat court has rejected a 24-year-old woman's petition to legally renounce her adoptive parents by cancelling the adoption deed and having the names of her adoptive parents removed from her certificates and documents.

She claimed she wanted to legally separate from her adoptive parents because of ill-treatment over the years. Turning down the demand, the court cited Section 15 of the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956, which bars such cancellation and prohibits such renunciation either by the adopted child or the adoptive parents.

To justify the legal provision, additional senior civil judge at Mirzapur court R C Sodhaparmar also cited Hindu rituals associated with the adoption process. The court said that in Hindu culture adoption is considered a "samskara" and, for this occasion, the ritual prescribed is "homam", considered divine. Lawmakers based Section 15 on this concept and it was declared that the adopters are required to perform their duties towards the adoptee as biological parents would, while the adoptee must perform all duties a biological son or daughter would.

According to the case details, the applicant woman and her biological parents filed the application in court last year and sought cancellation of the adoption deed. The court was informed that the woman was born in Gandhidham in 1999. Seven months later, she was adopted by her father's brother, who was childless then. A deed was notarised in 2007. Her adoptive parents live in Jaipur, while her biological parents live in Ahmedabad, where she currently resides.

Seeking cancellation of the 2007 deed, the woman told the court that she found out late that she was an adopted child. She claimed that she got admission to a dental surgery course in Udaipur but could not pay the fee due to her adoptive parents' poor financial condition. So she turned to her biological parents for help, and they arranged for her to study medicine in the Philippines. For this, she required documents from her adoptive parents, who allegedly refused to give them to her as they disapproved of the help given by her biological parents. Her admission was cancelled and her birth parents had to bear the financial loss.

She also alleged that she left her adoptive parents and snapped all ties with them due to continuous ill-treatment. Besides cancelling the adoption deed, she sought a declaration from the court that her adoptive parents had no right over her. She also wanted their names to be removed from her documents.

The court notified the adoptive parents, but they did not appear to defend themselves. However, the court rejected the plea, stating the woman could not give any evidence to establish there was ill-treatment or torture by her adoptive parents.

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