Rules shouldn’t come in way of affection, Bombay HC says in adoption case

Secretary of Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), through its lawyer Dhairyasheel Nalawade, tried to explain how the couple require a no-objection certificate from them. The woman’s lawyer, Shirin Merchant, argued that CARA did not have any provision for a case like hers – one Indian national and another with a different nationality. Merchant pointed out that people dither and eventually back out of adoption as a result of complex CARA rules and procedures.

She claimed the woman had been in India for the past six years and wanted to settle down here. “Therefore, it is not possible to procure a certificate of no-objection from the embassy or mission of my country,” the woman said in the petition.

Nalawade, however, informed that she had, in May 2014, procured an NoC from the American embassy. “Lay persons like my clients do not know the procedure and as asked by the authorities had then procured one,” the woman’s lawyer contested.

Justices V M Kanade and B P Colabawalla also felt there must have been some confusion and labeled the six-year-old’s welfare as the “topmost priority”. “If a person can take care of the child, then there is no need to go into the technicalities. The most important thing is the welfare of the child,” the judges said.

To this, Nalawade submitted that adoption proceedings would be “jeopardised” if people would start taking legal recourse like the present one. Going by the instructions from CARA secretary Veerendra Mishra, the lawyer said there were thousands of prospective parents waiting.

Situation where a child develops a bond with the adoptive parent has to be considered irrespective of rules, the court observed. “We understand your anxiety. But a child developing love and affection towards the (adoptive) mother becomes more important,” the bench said.

The boy was born to an unwed woman and was put in a Pune-based adoption agency in 2012. The biological mother relinquished her rights over the child and went for a re-marriage. Under the Indian law, the adoption agency took care of the child till he turned six, after which advertisements were put out for adoption. The agency did not find it easy to find a suitable home as the child needed a proper support system for his special needs.

aamir.khan@expressindia.com