KOLKATA, India: Two child protection officers have been arrested for alleged links with a trafficking gang that ran illegal adoption centers in eastern India selling children to foreign couples, police said Saturday.
Investigators said children aged between six months and 14 years were sold in illegal adoptions to couples from Europe, America and Asia for between $12,000 and $23,000 and taken out of the country.
While India has an estimated 30 million orphans, legal adoption is rare because of strict rules governing the practice and there is a thriving illicit market.
Police arrested two Darjeeling child protection officials, Mrinal Ghosh and Debasish Chanda, on Friday “for their links with the adoption scandal,” Nishat Parvej of the state’s Criminal Investigation Department told AFP.
He said three more government officials had “absconded,” as the widening inquiry into the adoption racket embroils political and administrative figures.
So far six people have been nabbed over the scandal, including Juhi Choudhury, a senior member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party in West Bengal.
The head of the adoption center at the heart of the scandal, Chandana Chakraborty, told investigators that Choudhury had been involved in child trafficking for several years.
Police arrested Chakraborty, a retired school principal, and her deputy Sonali Mondal last month after a tip-off from the federal adoption agency.
The pair ran the Bimala Sishu Griha center where children were sold abroad through forged documents to couples for as much as 1.5 million rupees ($23,000).
Investigators said the scam had lasted for several years before they started monitoring the charity in June when federal authorities found discrepancies in their records and relocated all the children from the center.
Chakraborty allegedly ran health camps to identify poor and unmarried pregnant women and persuaded them to give up their babies for adoption after paying them.
Experts say lengthy bureaucratic delays and complex rules in the adoption process push desperate couples toward the illegal adoption market.
Only 3,678 children were legally adopted by couples in India between April 2015 and March 2016, according to official data.
The latest scandal comes roughly four months after police arrested 18 people in the same state over a racket that saw gangs steal newborn babies from nursing homes with the intention of selling them.
India child protection officers held in trafficking probe
India child protection officers held in trafficking probe
Palestine Action hunger strikers launch legal action against UK govt
- They accuse authorities of abandoning prison safety policies
- Several of the imprisoned activists have been hospitalized
LONDON: Hunger strikers from Palestine Action in the UK have launched legal action against the government, accusing it of abandoning the policy framework for prison safety, The Independent reported.
A pre-action letter was sent to Justice Secretary David Lammy by a legal firm representing the activists.
It came as several imprisoned members of the banned organization — including one who has refused food for 51 days — were hospitalized due to their deteriorating health while on hunger strike.
They say they have sent several letters to Lammy, who is also deputy prime minister, but have received no response.
He was urged in the latest letter to respond within 24 hours as the issue is a “matter of urgency.”
The letter added: “Our clients’ health continues to deteriorate, such that the risk of their dying increases every day.”
An “urgent meeting” is needed “with the proposed defendant to discuss the deterioration of our clients’ health and to discuss attempts to resolve the situation,” it said.
Seven of the Palestine Action prisoners have been admitted to hospital since the hunger strike was launched on Nov. 2, including 30-year-old Amu Gib and Kamran Ahmed, 28.
They are being held in prisons across the country. Two members of the group have been forced to end their hunger strike due to health conditions: Jon Cink, 25, ended on day 41, while 22-year-old Umer Khalid finished on day 13.
Gib, now on day 51, was hospitalized last week and reportedly needs a wheelchair due to health concerns.
Dr. James Smith, an emergency physician, warned journalists last Thursday that some of the imprisoned activists “are dying” and need specialized medical care.
In a letter signed by more than 800 doctors, Smith said the hunger strikers were at “very high risk of serious complications, including organ failure, irreversible neurological damage, cardiac arrhythmias and death.”
The strikers are demanding that Palestine Action, which is classified as a terrorist organization, be de-proscribed.
They are also urging the government to shut down defense companies with ties to Israel, among other demands.
In response to the latest letter, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We strongly refute these claims. We want these prisoners to accept support and get better, and we will not create perverse incentives that would encourage more people to put themselves at risk through hunger strikes.”
