Adoption Body Suspects Organ Sale Racket in Andhra Pradesh
Originally published by the India Abroad News Service, May 1, 2001
HYDERABAD — A government-run adoption body in Andhra Pradesh has referred a blind orphan girl, rescued from a private adoption center in the outskirts of the city, to an eye hospital following reports that the home may have removed the cornea of her eyes.
The decision came after the head of the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), which works under the Union Ministry of Welfare and Social Justice and supervises adoptions in the country, met the two blind girls rescued last week from the John Abraham Bethany Home.
After the visit, CARA chairperson Andal Damodaran said one of the girls was born blind, but in the other, the cornea could have been forcibly removed from the eyes.
"We have asked doctors to give their report as to how the cornea was removed. Whether the cornea was removed through surgery or by other means the doctors will give their report," Damodaran said after a visit to Sishu Vihar, the state-run childcare center where 187 orphans, rescued from five adoption homes around the state, are being kept.
The suspicion of cornea removal from the girl's eye has prompted police to investigate whether the private adoption home, accused of selling children, were also involved in illegal sale of organs.
Damodaran has blamed the state government for failing to control the adoption racket, in which adoption centers bought children from poor villagers, and then sold them to foreigners for large sums.
She defended CARA saying it only issues licenses of operation to adoption centers recommended by the state government. Calling last week's operations merely "the tip of the iceberg," Damodaran called for government attention on poverty alleviation and pre- and post-natal checkups to prevent such rackets.
She said CARA was doing its best to fight the menace by canceling the license of those suspected to be involved in child sale and by tightening laws, which make it compulsory for a child to be with a recognized adoption agency for a month before being given away in adoption. She, however, said the new rules could not be implemented at present because adoption homes had gone to court against them.
A two-member CARA team had already visited Hyderabad to conduct an inquiry into the functioning of various adoption agencies. The team in its interim report said the state government failed to keep a tight vigil over the activities of adoption centers.
