Gradmom's drive to get girls back gets HC pat

Kisabai Lokhande's desperate fight to bring back her two granddaughters who went "missing" from a children's remand home in Satara got support from the Bombay High Court on Monday. 

Lokhande, a 66-yer-old illiterate vegetable vendor from Karad, had filed a petition in the HC seeking the court's intervention to get back her granddaughters, aged 14 and nine, who now reportedly stay with their adoptive parents in Spain. Lokhande has sought a probe against the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), the Central Adoption Resource Centre (CARA), a Spanish NGO and Preet Mandir, a Pune-based private adoption agency, for illegally declaring the two girls "destitute" and executing the inter-country adoption without their guardian's consent. "This is nothing short than kidnapping," Lokhande's lawyer Pradeep Havnur told the court. 

"We are worried about such adoptions. There are allegations of malpractice. Such cases are on the rise," observed Justice Ranjana Desai, who heard the matter along with Justice RG Ketkar. The court has issued a notice to CARA,  the central agency for inter-country adoptions and summoned a senior cop to the court on May 6.

The petition hints at a global adoption racket where agencies connive to get children declared as destitute, and adoption agencies receive money in the guise of donations for processing international adoptions. Lokhande has alleged that her granddaughters were declared "destitute" without her consent or knowledge.