Search the Internet          Tips

Another AP orphanage raided, 61 infants rescued

In a continuing crackdown on child trafficking in Andhra Pradesh, authorities Thursday rescued 61 children from an unlicensed adoption centre on the city outskirts being run by the wife of a senior IPS officer and another five infants from an NGO-run orphanage in Mahaboobnagar town.

As murky dimensions of merchandise in adoptions unfolded, the orphanage 'Precious Moments', being managed by Anita Sen, wife of Additional Director General of Police (Recruitment) Swaranjit Sen, found itself in the dock.

A team of officials from Central Adoption Resource Agency inspected the premises twice since Wednesday and seized all records and moved the 61 children to Shishu Vihar, a state-run child care centre Hyderdad.

In another raid on an orphanage at Mahaboobnagar town, about 100 kms from Hyderabad, five baby girls were rescued and shifted to Shishu Vihar, taking the total number of children rescued since last week's crackdown to 172.

Precious Moments, located at Miyapur on the city outskirts, was the fifth centre to be raided by officials of the state women development and child welfare department to unearth what has now turned out to be a well-oiled child trafficking racket.

Significantly, all the children rescued so far are girls, indicating a dubious ring of operators exploiting abject poverty among tribal communities from whom the infants are said to be procured.

Soon after the children were brought to Shishu Vihar in ambulances, a team of government doctors examined them and shifted seven infants, to Niloufer Children's Hospital where some of the rescued last week are undergoing treatment.

A verification of records revealed that Precious Moments was resorting to illegal adoptions though it only had permission from juvenile justice board to admit "neglected and abandoned" children and coordinate their rehabilitation, sources in women development and child welfare department told PTI.

Though the orphage was only permitted to transfer children to a licensed adoption agency, the records showed that it was done only on paper and children continued to stay at the home, Ranga Reddy District Collector Ajay Jain said.

Earlier last week, officials had raided John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home at Tandur in neighbouring Ranga Reddy district and rescued 60 infants while another six were rescued from another hide-out in the city.

The alleged kingpin of the racket N Sanjeeva Rao, whose city-based agency Action for Social Development was also raided, is now in judicial custody while the owner of Bethany Home Savithri Devi, carrying a rward of Rs 100,000 on her head, is still at large.

The CARA team, comprising its deputy director Jagannath Pathi and assistant director Saraswati, is in Andhra Pradesh to investigate the adoption scam which has triggered a wide sense of outrage, particularly in view of the involvement of some players who had also figured in a similar child trafficking scandal two years ago.

Tell us what you think of this report