Muslim Reservation Illegal

முஸ்லிம்களுக்கு 4 சதவீத ஒதுக்கீடு : ஆந்திர முடிவை நிராகரித்தது ஐகோர்ட்

பிப்ரவரி 09,2010,00:00  IST

http://www.dinamalar.com/court_detail.asp?news_id=5120

ஐதராபாத் : “பிற்பட்டோருக்கான இடஒதுக்கீட்டில், முஸ்லிம் சமூகத்தினருக்கு 4 சதவீத உள் ஒதுக்கீடு வழங்கி ஆந்திர மாநில அரசு பிறப்பித்த உத்தரவு செல்லாது’ என, அம்மாநில ஐகோர்ட் உத்தரவிட்டுள்ளது.

ஆந்திராவில் முதல்வர் ராஜசேகர ரெட்டி தலைமையில் இருந்த காங்கிரஸ் அரசு, கல்வி மற்றும் வேலைவாய்ப்பில், முஸ்லிம்களுக்கு 5 சதவீத இட ஒதுக்கீடு வழங்கி சட்டம் இயற்றியது. இந்தச் சட்டத்தை செல்லாது என, ஆந்திர ஐகோர்ட் அறிவித்து விட்டது. இதையடுத்து, பிற்பட்டோருக்கான இடஒதுக் கீட்டில், முஸ்லிம் சமூகத்தினரில், பின்தங்கிய 15 பிரிவினருக்கு, 4 சதவீத இடஒதுக்கீடு அதாவது உள் ஒதுக்கீடு வழங்கி சட்டம் இயற்றப்பட்டது. இந்தச் சட்டம் அரசியல் சட்டப்படி செல்லத்தக்கதா என, கேள்வி எழுப்பி, ஆந்திர ஐகோர்ட்டில் வழக்குத் தொடரப்பட்டது. இந்த வழக்கை, தலைமை நீதிபதி ஏ.ஆர்.தவே தலைமையிலான ஏழு நீதிபதிகள் அடங்கிய, ஆந்திர ஐகோர்ட்டின் அரசியல் சட்ட பெஞ்ச் விசாரித்தது. வழக்கின் விசாரணை கடந்த ஆண்டு மார்ச் மாதம் முடிந்தது. நேற்று தீர்ப்பு வழங்கப்பட்டது.மொத்தமுள்ள ஏழு நீதிபதிகளில் ஐந்து பேர், முஸ்லிம்களுக்கு இடஒதுக்கீடு வழங்கியதற்கு எதிராக தீர்ப்பு அளித்துள்ளனர். ஒரு நீதிபதி தன் கருத்தை தெரிவிக்கவில்லை. மற்றொரு நீதிபதி இடஒதுக்கீட்டிற்கு ஆதரவாக கருத்து தெரிவித் துள்ளார். ஐந்து நீதிபதிகள் பிறப்பித்த உத்தரவு விவரம் வருமாறு: பிற்பட்ட சமூகத்தினருக்கான இடஒதுக்கீட்டில், முஸ்லிம் சமூகத்தில் 15 பிரிவினருக்கு 4 சதவீத உள் ஒதுக்கீடு வழங்கியது சரியல்ல. இது அரசியல் சட்டத்திற்கு விரோதமானது. இடஒதுக்கீடு தொடர்பாக ஆந்திர மாநில அரசு 2007 ஜூலை 23ல் இயற்றிய, ” சமூக மற்றும் கல்வி ரீதியாக பின்தங்கிய முஸ்லிம்களுக்கான இடஒதுக்கீடு சட்டம்’ செல்லாது. இவ்வாறு நீதிபதிகள் உத்தரவில் கூறியுள்ளனர். ஆந்திர ஐகோர்ட்டின் இந்த முடிவை பாரதிய ஜனதா கட்சி வரவேற்றுள்ளது.

Eye on polls, Bengal gives quota to more Muslims.

வேலைவாய்ப்பில் முஸ்லிம்களுக்கு 10 சதவீத இட ஒதுக்கீடு மேற்கு வங்காள அரசு அறிவிப்பு
கொல்கத்தா, பிப்.9- http://www.dailythanthi.com/article.asp?NewsID=545918&disdate=2/9/2010

முஸ்லிம் சமுதாயத்தினருக்கு அரசு வேலைவாய்ப்பில் இட ஒதுக்கீடு வழங்க வேண்டும் என்று, ரங்கநாத் மிஸ்ரா கமிட்டி மத்திய அரசுக்கு சிபாரிசு செய்து இருக்கிறது. இந்த நிலையில், இந்த சிபாரிசுப்படி முதல் முறையாக மேற்கு வங்காள அரசு, முஸ்லிம்களுக்கு இட ஒதுக்கீடை அறிவித்து உள்ளது. முஸ்லிம் மக்களில் சமூக, பொருளாதார மற்றும் கல்விரீதியில் பின்தங்கியுள்ள பிரிவினருக்கு அரசு வேலைவாய்ப்பில் 10 சதவீத இட ஒதுக்கீடு வழங்கப்படும் என்று, மேற்கு வங்காள முதல்-மந்திரி பட்டாச்சார்ஜி அறிவித்தார்.

மாநிலத்தில் இதர பிற்படுத்தப்பட்ட வகுப்பினருக்கு ஏற்கனவே 7 சதவீத இட ஒதுக்கீடு வழங்கப்பட்டு வருகிறது. தற்போதைய 10 சதவீத ஒதுக்கீடு மூலம் இதர பிற்பட்ட வகுப்பினருக்கான ஒதுக்கீடு 17 சதவீதமாக அதிகரிக்கும் என்று அவர் தெரிவித்தார். மேற்கு வங்காளத்தில், இன்னும் ஓராண்டில் சட்டசபை தேர்தல் நடைபெற இருக்கிறது.

கடந்த தேர்தலில் பெரும்பான்மையான முஸ்லிம்கள் திரிணாமுல் காங்கிரசுக்கு ஆதரவளித்த நிலையில், ஆளும் இடதுசாரி முன்னணி அரசு இந்த இட ஒதுக்கீடு வழங்கி இருப்பது மேற்கு வங்காள அரசியலில் தாக்கத்தை ஏற்படுத்தும் என்று எதிர்பார்க்கப்படுகிறது.

Ravik Bhattacharya

Monday , Feb 01, 2010 at 0259 hrs Kolkata:

Even as Muslim leader Siddiqullah Chowdhury on Thursday hit streets demanding 15 per cent job reservation for the community, the state government decided to adopt the ‘Kerala model’ to include 28 Muslim communities in the OBC category. At present, there are 12 Muslim communities under this category. Through this initiative, the state government aims at providing reservation to nearly half of the Muslim population in West Bengal.

“Half of the 71 per cent Hindus in the state are covered under SC/ST category, but only 2 per cent of Muslims, who form 25 per cent of the population, are covered under OBC. I am all for reservation for Muslims. But there is a constitutional bar on this matter. Therefore, we are finding other ways to help them out,” said Abdus Sattar, state Minority Development Minister.

In Kerala, over 91 per cent of Muslim population is under reservation as OBCs, more a model which Bengal is all set to follow. The move is keeping in mind the Assembly elections next year and the need to woo back Muslim voters, who since the past two years have drifted towards Trinamool Congress.

Cross Banned in Shools

Crucifix Banned From Italy’s Schools By New EU Court Ruling

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ROME — The Vatican on Tuesday denounced a ruling by the European court of human rights that said the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religious and education freedoms.

In a decision that could force a review of the use of religious symbols in government-run schools across Europe, the court ordered Italy to pay a euro5,000 ($7,390) fine to a mother in northern Italy who fought for eight years to have crucifixes removed from her children’s public school classrooms. The Italian government said it would appeal.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the crucifix was a fundamental sign of the importance of religious values in Italian history and culture and was a symbol of unity and welcoming for all of humanity – not one of exclusion.

He said a European court had no right intervening in such a profoundly Italian matter and said “it seems as if the court wanted to ignore the role of Christianity in forming Europe’s identity, which was and remains essential.”

“Religion gives a precious contribution to the formation and moral growth of people, and it’s an essential component in our civilization,” he said in a statement. “It’s wrong and myopic to try to exclude it from education.”

Crucifixes are common in Italian public schools as well as courtrooms. Occasionally, legal cases arise; in one well-known case, a Muslim activist filed suit challenging the legality of the crucifixes in his son’s elementary school in Ofena, about 145 kilometers (90 miles) east of Rome.

Though he eventually lost, the case was an early shot in what has become a battle in Europe about whether there should be any religious symbols at all in European classrooms and other public places. More recently in Italy, a judge who refused to hold hearings because there were crufixes in his courtroom was ordered to stand trial for having failed to perform his official duties.

The Strasbourg-based court said the crucifix could be disturbing to non-Christian or atheist pupils, rejecting arguments by Italy’s government that it was a national symbol of culture, history, identity, tolerance and secularism.

The court said secular, state-run schools must “observe confessional neutrality in the context of public education,” where attendance is compulsory.

But while it fined the government, the seven-judge panel stopped short of ordering Italy to remove the crucifixes, which are common in Italian public schools. The ruling can still be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights’ Grand Chamber of 17 judges, whose decisions are binding.

The case was brought by Soile Lautsi, a mother of two who claimed public schools in her northern Italian town refused eight years ago to remove the Roman Catholic symbols from classrooms. She had maintained that the crucifix violates the secular principles the public schools are supposed to uphold, and the right to offer her children a secular education.

She filed her case with the European Court of Human Rights in July 2006, after Italy’s Constitutional Court dismissed her complaint. Her efforts to rid public schools of religious symbols in a country that is predominantly Roman Catholic had not been welcomed.

Lautsi, who is of Finnish origins, and her husband, Massimo Albertin, said they were satisfied.

“We believe the ruling is a positive signal from Europe to Italy, which seems to increasingly lose its secularism,” Albertin was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency from his home in Albano Terme. “The crucifix creates discrimination.”

Still, the government maintained the crucifix is a symbol of Italian and European history and tradition.

“In our country nobody wants to impose the Catholic religion, let alone with a crucifix,” Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said. But she added that “it is not by eliminating the traditions of individual countries that a united Europe is built.”

In its ruling, the court said the presence of the crucifix “could easily be interpreted by pupils of all ages as a religious sign and they would feel that they were being educated in a school environment bearing the stamp of a given religion.” It added that the presence of such symbols could be “disturbing for pupils who practiced other religions or were atheists.”

Italian bishops said they were perplexed by the decision.

“The multiple significance of the crucifix, which is not just a religious symbol but a cultural sign, has been either ignored or overlooked,” the Italian Bishop’s Conference said in a statement.

Italy school crucifixes ‘barred’

Catholicism stopped being the state religion in Italy in 1984

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled against the use of crucifixes in classrooms in Italy.

It said the practice violated the right of parents to educate their children as they saw fit, and ran counter to the child’s right to freedom of religion.

The case was brought by an Italian mother, Soile Lautsi, who wants to give her children a secular education.

The Vatican said it was shocked by the ruling, calling it “wrong and myopic” to exclude the crucifix from education.

The ruling has sparked anger in the largely Catholic country, with one politician calling the move “shameful”.

The Strasbourg court found that: “The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities… restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions.”

It also restricted the “right of children to believe or not to believe”, the seven judges ruling on the case said in a statement quoted by AFP news agency.

European identity

Mrs Lautsi complained to the European court that her children had to attend a public school in northern Italy that had crucifixes in every room.

She was awarded 5,000 euros ($7,400; £4,500) in damages.

Vatican spokesman the Rev Federico Lombardi said the European court had no right intervening in such a profoundly Italian matter, the Associated Press reported.

The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities… restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions. Court ruling Read your views on the ruling

“It seems as if the court wanted to ignore the role of Christianity in forming Europe’s identity, which was and remains essential.”

He told Italian TV: “The crucifix has always been a sign of God’s love, unity and hospitality to all humanity.

“It is unpleasant that it is considered a sign of division, exclusion or a restriction of freedom.”

‘Italian tradition’

Many politicians in Italy have reacted angrily.

Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said the crucifix was a “symbol of our tradition”, and not a mark of Catholicism.

One government minister called the ruling “shameful”, while another said that Europe was forgetting its Christian heritage.

The government says it will appeal against the decision.

The BBC’s Duncan Kennedy in Rome says that it is customary in Italy to see crucifixes in public buildings, including schools, despite the constitution saying that there should be a separation of church and state.

The law requiring crucifixes to be hung in schools dates back to the 1920s.

Although a revised accord between the Vatican and the Italian government ended Catholicism’s position as the state religion in 1984, the crucifix law has never been repealed.

Some conservatives have already complained about schools dropping nativity plays to avoid upsetting Muslim children.

Human rights ruling against classroom crucifixes angers Italy

European court of human rights rules crucifixes that hang in classrooms violate religious and educational freedoms

A crucifix on a classroom wall in Rome. Photograph: Tony Gentile/Reuters

There was uproar in Italy today over a ruling by the European court of human rights that the crucifixes that hang in most Italian classrooms are a violation of religious and educational freedoms.

The seven judges, whose decision could prompt a Europe-wide review of the use of religious symbols on public premises, said state schools had to “observe confessional neutrality”.

Except on the far left, the ruling met with condemnation among Italian politicians and was denounced by the Vatican. Silvio Berlusconi’s education minister, Maria Stella Gelmini, said: “No one, not even some ideologically motivated European court, will succeed in rubbing out our identity.”

A Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, said the crucifix was a fundamental sign of the importance of religious values in Italian history and culture, and was a symbol of unity and welcoming for all of humanity, not one of exclusion.

A European court had no right intervening in such a profoundly Italian matter, he said, adding: “It seems as if the court wanted to ignore the role of Christianity in forming Europe’s identity, which was and remains essential.”

The ruling marked the end of an eight-year battle by a Finnish-born mother, Soile Lautsi. She took her cause to court after failing to get crucifixes removed from the school at which her two children were being taught at a town in north-east Italy.

Lautsi appealed to Strasbourg three years ago when her case was thrown out by Italy’s constitutional court.

Although more than 7% of Italy’s population is now of immigrant origin, multiculturalism has made few inroads and most Italians argue passionately, as did their government’s advocate in Strasbourg, that the crucifix is a symbol of national identity.

The court disagreed. “The presence of the crucifix could easily be interpreted by pupils of all ages as a religious sign, and they would feel that they were being educated in a school environment bearing the stamp of a given religion,” it ruled, ordering the Italian state to pay Lautsi €5,000 (£4,476) in damages.

Classroom crucifixes were made compulsory by two laws in the 1920s when Italy was a fascist state.

They have been applied less rigorously since 1984, when Catholicism ceased to be the state religion.

One government minister, Roberto Calderoli, of the Northern League, said yesterday: “The European court has trodden on our rights, our culture, our history, our traditions and our values.”

Claudio Scajola, a member of Berlusconi’s Freedom People party, said: “The crucifix is a universal symbol of love, meekness and peace. Preventing it from being displayed is an act of violence against the deep-seated feelings of the Italian people and all persons of goodwill.”

The mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, said he was flabbergasted. And the new, ex-communist leader of Italy’s biggest opposition group, the Democratic party, Pierluigi Bersani, protested: “An ancient tradition like the crucifix cannot be offensive to anyone.”

On the Facebook website, 23,000 people signed up to two pages opposed to the court’s decision within hours of the news breaking.

The government’s lawyer said he would seek leave to appeal to the Strasbourg court’s 17-member Grand Chamber. If his petition is rejected, or if an appeal is subsequently thrown out, then Italy would be obliged to comply.

Police Shielding Bishop

தலைமறைவான பிஷப்புக்கு போலீஸ் உயர் அதிகாரிகள் பாதுகாப்பு

ஜனவரி 20,2010,00:00  IST

சேலம் : கோவை சி.எஸ்.ஐ., திருமண்டலம் கட்டுப்பாட்டில் உள்ள கல்விக் கூடங்கள் மற்றும் சொத்துக்களில், முறைகேடு செய்ததாக சி.பி.சி.ஐ.டி., போலீசார் தேடி வரும் பிஷப் மாணிக்கம் துரை, சேலத்தில் உயர் பதவி வகிக்கும் இரு போலீசாரின் ஆதரவில் இருப்பதாக குற்றச்சாட்டு எழுந்துள்ளது.

கோவை சி.எஸ்.ஐ., திருமண்டலம் பிஷப்பாக இருப்பவர் மாணிக்கம் துரை. கோவை, தர்மபுரி, நாமக்கல், சேலம், நீலகிரி, ஈரோடு, திருப்பூர், கிருஷ்ணகிரி ஆகிய மாவட்டங்களில் உள்ள சி.எஸ்.ஐ., பிரிவு கிறிஸ்தவ தேவாலயங்கள், கல்விக் கூடங்கள் அவரது கட்டுப்பாட்டில் உள்ளன. குறிப்பிட்ட இந்த எட்டு மாவட்டங்களில் அமைந்துள்ள நூற்றுக்கும் மேற்பட்ட தேவாலயங்கள், 200க்கும் மேற்பட்ட கல்விக் கூடங்கள், சொத்துக்களின் பராமரிப்பு, நிர்வாகப்பணிகளை அந்தந்த மாவட்டத்தில் உள்ள நிர்வாகிகள் கண்காணித்த போதிலும், அவற்றின் முழு கட்டுப்பாடும், கோவை திருமண்டலத்தின் தலைமைப் பதவியை வகிக்கும் பிஷப்பையே சார்ந்துள்ளது. சில மாதங்களுக்கு முன், கல்விக் கூடங்கள் மற்றும் சொத்துக்களில், பிஷப் முறைகேடு செய்வதாக புகார் எழுந்தது. “அவரிடமிருந்து சொத்துகளை பறிமுதல் செய்ய வேண்டும்; அவர் பதவி விலக வேண்டும்’ என்பது உள்ளிட்ட கோரிக்கைகளை வலியுறுத்தி, சி.எஸ்.ஐ., கிறிஸ்தவ அமைப்பில் உள்ளவர்கள் போராட்டம் நடத்தினர்.

கடந்த 10ம் தேதி கோவை சி.பி.சி.ஐ.டி., போலீசார், பிஷப் மாணிக்கம் துரை, மூன்று கோடி ரூபாய்க்கு மேல் முறைகேடில் ஈடுபட்டதாக வழக்கு பதிவு செய்தனர். இந்நிலையில் மாணிக்கம் துரை தலைமறைவானார். சேலம் உயர் போலீஸ் அதிகாரிகளிடம் அவர் தஞ்சம் அடைந்துள்ளதாகவும், அவருக்கு போலீசாரே ராஜமரியாதை அளிப்பதாகவும் தகவல் வெளியாகியுள்ளது. குறிப்பிட்ட இரு போலீஸ் அதிகாரிகள் தான், மாணிக்கம் துரையை சி.பி.சி.ஐ.டி.,யின் வலையில் இருந்து பாதுகாத்து, நீதிமன்றம் மூலம் முன் ஜாமீன் பெற வக்கீல்களையும் ஏற்பாடு செய்துள்ளதாக சென்னையிலுள்ள உயர்அதிகாரிகள் வரை புகார் சென்றுள்ளது. மாணிக்கம் துரை ஏற்கனவே கோவை நீதிமன்றத்தில் முன் ஜாமீன் கேட்டு தாக்கல் செய்த மனுவில், அவருக்கு முன் ஜாமீன் கிடைக்கவில்லை.

http://www.maalaimalar.com/2010/01/13140132/CBE02130110indd.html

மோசடி புகார் நிரூபிக்கப்பட்டால் பிஷப் மாணிக்கம் துரை மீது நடவடிக்கை பேராயர் பேட்டி

Coimbatore புதன்கிழமை, ஜனவரி 13, 2:01 PM IST

கோவை திருமண்டல சி.எஸ்.ஐ. பிஷப்பாக இருக்கும் மாணிக்கம் துரை திருச்சபைக்கு சொந்தமாக ரூ. 3 கோடியை கையாடல் செய்து விட்டதாக போலீசில் புகார் செய்யப்பட்டது.

இதுகுறித்து சி.பி.சி.ஐ.டி. போலீசார் விசாரணை நடத்தி வருகிறார்கள். பிஷப் மாணிக்கம் துரையை கைது செய்ய வேண்டும் என திருச்சபை அலுவலகத்தை முற்றுகையிட்டு சிலர் போராட்டம் நடத்தினார்கள். பிஷப் தலைமறைவாகி விட்டதாக குற்றச்சாட்டு எழுந்தது.

இந்த பிரச்சினை தொடர்பாக சி.எஸ்.ஐ. திருமண்டல நிர்வாகிகள் கலந்து கொண்டு ஆலோசனை கூட் டம் ரேஸ்கோர்சில் உள்ள பிஷப் அலுவலகத்தில் நடைபெற்றது.

திருமண்டல செயலாளர் ரிட்சர்டு துரை தலைமை தாங்கினார். முன்னாள் செயலாளரும், கல்விக்குழு தலைவருமான அமிர்தம் முன்னிலை வகித்தார். இதில் நிர்வாகிகள் கலந்து கொண்டனர். கூட்டத்தில் எடுக்கப்பட்ட முடிவுகள் குறித்து அமிர்தம் மற்றும் வக்கீல் சாக்ரடீஸ் ஆகியோர் கூறியதாவது:-

பிஷப் மாணிக்கம் துரை தலைமறைவாக இல்லை. இறைப்பணியில் தொடர்ந்து கவனம் செலுத்தி வருகிறார். சி.பி.சி.ஐ.டி. போலீசார் எப்போது அழைத்தாலும் விசாரணைக்கு ஒத்துழைக்க தயாராக இருக்கிறார். அவரை பற்றி சிலர் தவறான தகவல்களை பரப்பி வருகிறார்கள்.

இவ்வாறு அவர்கள் கூறினார்கள்.

இந்த நிலையில் தென் இந்திய திருச்சபை முதன்மை பேராயர் கிளன் ஸ்டோன் கோவை சி.பி.சி.ஐ.டி. போலீஸ் நிலையத்துக்கு வந்து பிஷப் மாணிக்கம் துரை குறித்து பல்வேறு தகவல் களை கூறினார்.

பின்னர் அவர் நிருபர்களிடம் கூறியதாவது:-

பேராயர் நிலையில் இருப்பவர்கள் திருச்சபையின் நிதியை பாதுகாப்பது முக்கியமாகும். இறை பணி செய்வதையே கடமையாக கொண்டவர்கள் மீது இது போன்ற புகார்கள் எழுவது இறைமக்களை புண்படுத்துவது போல் ஆகும். இந்த மோசடி வழக்கில் பிஷப் மாணிக்கம் துரை மீது குற்றம் நிரூபிக்கப்பட்டால், அவர் மீது நடவடிக்கை எடுப்பது குறித்து நெல்லை மாவட்டம் குற்றாலத்தில் நடைபெற உள்ள கூட்டத்தில் கலந்துபேசி எடுக்கப்படும்.

இவ்வாறு அவர் கூறினார்.

இந்த நிலையில் முன்னாள் பிஷம் மீதும் போலீசில் புகார் கொடுக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது. கோவை சி.எஸ்.ஐ. திருமண்டல கல்விக்குழு தலைவர் அமிர்தம் ரேஸ் கோர்ஸ் போலீசில் முன்னாள் வில்லியம் மோசஸ் தன்னை அவதூறாக பேசி கொலை மிரட்டல் விடுத்ததாக புகார் கொடுத்துள்ளார்.

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தங்கியிருப்பதாக போலீசுக்கு ஒரு ரகசிய தகவல் கிடைத்தது. இதையடுத்து தனிப்படை
போலீசார் விடுதியை முற்றுகையிட்டனர்.

விடுதியில் தங்கியிருந்த வேலூர் மாவட்டம் பள்ளூரைச் சேர்ந்த இம்மானுவேல் என்கிற பாதிரியார், திருநெல்வேலி மாவட்டம் செல்லிய நல்லூரைச் சேர்ந்த மாடசாமி, ராஜபாளையத்தைச் சேர்ந்த பிச்சை மணி ஆகியோர் கைது செய்யப்பட்டனர்.

அங்கிருந்த ஐம்பொன்னால் செய்யப்பட்ட கிருஷ்ணர் சிலையை போலீசார் மீட்டனர்.
அவர்களிடம் நடத்திய விசாரணையில் திருவண்ணாமலை, காஞ்சிபுரம், வேலூர் ஆகிய மாவட்டங்களில் சிலைகளை திருடியது தெரியவந்தது.

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தமிழ்நாடு சிலை திருட்டு தடுப்பு கூடுதல் டிஜிபி திலகவதி இத்தகவலை
தெரிவித்தார்.

Idol-lifters in police dragnet

http://newstodaynet.com/newsindex.php?id=21185%20&%20section=7

Economic Offences Wing has arrested a seven-member gang including a pastor on the charge of trying to smuggle panchaloha idols worth several crores of rupees.

Briefing mediapersons in Chennai today, the Offences Wing Additional Director General of Police G Thilagavathi said based on a tip-off, a special police team went to a lodge at Periamet where the gang was staying and caught pastor Immanuel of Pallur in Vellore, Madasamy of Chelliyanallur in Tirunelveli and Pitchaimani

The team also seized a panchaloha idol of Krishna. On interrogation, the accused revealed that one Jaganathan and Velu of Vellore had been involved in lifting the temple idols from Tiruvannamalai, Kanchipuram and Vellore districts. He said the duo usually gives the stolen idols to the pastor.

The stolen idols were of Krishna, Rathai, Rukumani, Vinayakar from a temple in Eeralachery. The duo which handed over an idol of Krishna to the pastor buried other idols on the banks of a river.

The gang then decided to give it to one Marisamy of Kottankuppam in Puducherry who is involved in smuggling the panchaloha idols to foreign countries.

Later the team arrested Marisamy and recovered five idols of Mahavir which were stolen from a temple in Tiruvannamalai. Based on the information, the team also recovered other panchaloha idols which were hidden.

As many as 11 panchaloha idols worth about Rs 11 crore were recovered, she added. The team also arrested Pitchumani and Gangachalam in this regard.

குழந்தைகள் திருடும் கிறிஸ்துவ பாதிரிகள்

TEN US Christian missionaries have been charged with child abduction and conspiracy, almost a week after they were caught trying to smuggle 33 children out of quake-hit Haiti.

The Americans from an Idaho-based charity were formally charged with “kidnapping minors and criminal association,” said their lawyer Edwin Coq, after his hopes were dashed that all of the group except its leader would be freed.
The group of five men and five women, who have been held since late last Friday, should now be tried in Haiti, Justice Minister Paul Denis said, adding he saw “no reason” why they would be sent to the United States for trial.

One of the missionaries told AFP as she arrived at court that she and her co-defendants “are just trusting God for a positive outcome”.

They have denied any ill-intent, saying they only wanted to help those children left orphaned or abandoned by the January 12 quake that ravaged the Caribbean nation, leaving one million people homeless.

csi church funds Frauds

Diocese funds misuse: Crucial meet next week

M Rafi Ahmed http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Diocese+funds+misuse:+Crucial+meet+next+week&artid=UvBnTZ85KO0=&SectionID=vBlkz7JCFvA=&MainSectionID=fyV9T2jIa4A=&SectionName=EL7znOtxBM3qzgMyXZKtxw==&SEO=

COIMBATORE: Even as the CSI Diocese members here are anxiously waiting for the outcome of the crucial Bishops’ council meet scheduled to be held on Monday at the Chennai Royapettah Synod office, some more skeletons have tumbled out of the cupboard of Bishop M Dorai.

The members have already agitated over the alleged large-scale misappropriation of diocese funds by the bishop and his younger brother M Moorthy. Prem Kumar, a diocese member had sent a petition to the state DGP seeking action against Bishop Dorai and that was forwarded to the Coimbatore CB-CID for inquiry. As the sleuths began the probe, the bishop moved the district court seeking bail, but was rejected, then a petition was filed in the Madras High Court and is slated to come up for final hearing on Monday.Meanwhile, CSI Welfare Association secretary M Prakash told Express that since the Synod office did not take any steps he has now provided documentary evidences including the letter written by Moorthy seeking Rs 5 lakh for setting up an endowment at CSI Teacher Training Institute and later Rs 6.50 lakh for renovation of its building and compound wall.

அப்துல் ரகுமான் என்ற சாந்தகுமார்

நான்கு பெண்களை ஏமாற்றி திருமணம் செய்தவர் கைது : பெயரை மாற்றி பல இடங்களில் தனிக்குடித்தனம்

பிப்ரவரி 04,2010,00:00  IST

: நான்கு பெண்களை ஏமாற்றி திருமணம் செய்தவரை, அயனாவரம் போலீசார் நேற்று கைது செய்தனர். சென்னை நியூ ஆவடி சாலை பள்ளியரசன் சாலையை சேர்ந்த முருகேசன் மகன் சாந்தகுமார்(32); பெயின்டர். இவர், அப்துல் ரகுமான் என்ற பெயரில் பாஸ்போர்ட் பெற்று சவுதி அரேபியா சென்று வேலை செய்து விட்டு மீண்டும் சென்னை திரும்பினார். கடந்த 1997ம் ஆண்டு பல்லாவரத்தை சேர்ந்த மைசூல்பேகம் என்பவரை மணந்தார்.

தற்போது, மைசூல் பேகத்திற்கு இரண்டு ஆண் மற்றும் பெண் குழந்தைகள் உள்ளனர். அதன் பிறகு, மைசூல் பேகத்தின் தோழியான தாம்பரத்தை சேர்ந்த சம்சத் பேகம் என்பவரை கடந்த 2003ம் ஆண்டு திருவேற்காட்டில்  திருமணம் செய்து கொண்டார். பின், அவரையும் வீட்டை விட்டு அனுப்பிவிட்டு, அஞ்சலி என்ற பெண்ணுடன் குடும்பம் நடத்தினார். அதன் பிறகு, அயனாவரம் புதுநகர் குறுக்கு தெருவை சேர்ந்த முரளி என்பவர் வீட்டில் வாடகைக்கு தங்கினார்.
நல்லவர் போல நடித்து முரளி மனைவி செல்வி(41) மற்றும் அவரது மகள் சரண்யா(21) ஆகியோர் மனதில் சாந்தகுமார் இடம்பிடித்தார். அதன்பின், சரண்யா மற்றும் சாந்தகுமார் இடையே காதல் விவகாரம், காட்டுத் தீ போல பரவியது. செல்வி சம்மதத்துடன் பெரியமேடு ரிஜிஸ்டர் ஆபீசில் கடந்த அக்டோபர் மாதம் 7ம் தேதி அவர்களுக்கு பதிவுத் திருமணம் நடந்தது. திருமணத்திற்கு பிறகு இருவரும் தனித்தனியே வசித்து வந்தனர்.
இந்நிலையில், கடந்த 28ம் தேதி செல்வி, சரண்யா மற்றும் சாந்தகுமார்  வீட்டில் இருந்து மாயமானார். மனைவி, மகளை கண்டுபிடித்து தரும்படி அயனாவரம் போலீசில் முரளி புகார் செய்தார். இன்ஸ்பெக்டர் அன்பழகன் மற்றும் போலீசார் விசாரணை நடத்தினர். காஞ்சிபுரத்தில் உள்ள வீட்டில் தங்கியிருந்த செல்வி மற்றும் சரண்யாவை அவர்கள் மீட்டு அயனாவரம் அழைத்து வந்தனர்.
அவர்களிடம் நடத்திய விசாரணையில் சாந்தகுமார் ஏற்கனவே மூன்று பெண்களை ஏமாற்றி திருமணம் செய்தவர் என்பது தெரிந்தது. மைசூல் பேகம் மூலம் சரண்யாவிற்கு இத்தகவல் கிடைத்துள்ளது. இது குறித்து சரண்யா, கொடுத்த புகாரின் பேரில், அயனாவரம் போலீசார் சாந்தகுமாரை நேற்று கைது செய்தனர்

Muslim woman needs Cops Protection

Couple seeks CoP’s protection.

Express News Service

CHENNAI: A newly married, inter-religious couple on Wednesday met City Commissioner of Police T Rajendran and submitted a petition seeking protection.

In the petition, H Salma Begum (24), a resident of Perambur, said she was working in a leather garment company in Arumbakkam for the last 10 years.

She met R Balasubramanian there and their friendship soon turned into love.

For the last five years, they were going steady and her parents came to know of it recently.

“Since he is a Hindu and I am a Muslim, I knew my parents would not consent to our marriage,” she said. “Besides, they began to look out for an alliance for me.” On January 22, Salma and Balasubramanian got married at a temple in Sriperumbudur in the presence of friends.

As her parents were out the loop, Salma continued to stay with them. But as they had intensified their efforts to find an alliance for her, she decided to come out in the open about her marriage.

“My husband’s family has accepted our marriage, so I want to move in with them,” she said.

Claiming that she apprehended threat to her safety and security and that of her husband and his family, she sought police protection.

To a query, she said she had converted to Hinduism.

Asked whether she had received any threats from any organisation, she replied in the negative.

The couple said they had been directed to go to the Sembium police station.

Allah- கர்த்தர்

கர்த்தர் வேறு அல்லா வேறு .

மலேசிய முஸ்லீம்கள் போராட்டம்
கர்த்தரை அல்லா என்று மலேசிய சர்ச்சுகளின் பைபிள்கள் குறிப்பிடுகின்றன. அது தவறு என்று முஸ்லீம்கள் கோர்ட்டில் வழக்கு தொடுத்தார்கள்.

கிறிஸ்துவத்தின் தெய்வமான கர்த்தரை அல்லா என்று எழுதலாம் என்று மலெசிய கோர்ட் தீர்ப்பு கொடுத்துவிட்டது.

அதனால், மலேசிய முஸ்லீம்கள் பொங்கி எழுந்து பல சர்ச்சுகளை எரிகுண்டு எறிந்து தீக்கிரையாக்கியுள்ளார்கள்.

கிறிஸ்துவர்களுக்கு கொழுப்புத்தான். அல்லா வேறு கர்த்தர் வேறு என்று முஸ்லீம்கள் சொன்னால், சரி என்று போக வேண்டியதுதானே?

இல்லை கர்த்தரை அல்லா என்றுதான் எழுதுவேன் என்று அடம் பிடித்தால் அவர்கள் கடுப்படிக்காமல் என்ன செய்வார்கள்?

ஆனால், இந்த கிறிஸ்துவர்களுக்கும் முஸ்லீம்களுக்கும் வேறு வேலையே கிடையாது. பிரஜாபதிதான் கர்த்தர். அவர்தான் ஏசு என்று டுமீல் விடுவார்கள்.

முஸ்லீம்களும், வேதத்தில் முகம்மதை பற்றி இப்படி சொல்லியிருக்கிறது அப்படி சொல்லியிருக்கிறது என்று டுமீல் விடுவார்கள்.

எல்லோரும் இந்துக்கள் போல பொறுமையாக இருப்பார்களா?

அதுவும் முஸ்லீம்கள்?!? ஒன்னும் இல்லாதத்துக்கே பெண்கள் பள்ளிக்கூடங்களை குண்டு போட்டு அழிப்பார்கள்.

இப்படி அல்லா கர்த்தர் என்று ஆரம்பதிலேயே கைவைத்தால்?

Malaysia church attacks continue in use of ‘Allah’ row
By Rachel Harvey
BBC South East Asia correspondent

A government minister says the church attacks are the work of extremists
Another Christian church has been attacked in Malaysia – the ninth such incident since Friday.

No one was injured in the attack on an evangelical Christian church, but buildings were damaged by what appear to have been home-made petrol bombs.

In another case a church was vandalised with black paint.

The attacks appear to have been triggered by a High Court ruling last month that overturned a government ban on non-Muslims using the word “Allah”.

The government is appealing against the decision.

Deep resentments

The latest attack caused limited physical damage – just a burned door and a charred entranceway.

But the political implications may be more serious.

Tensions have flared after Malaysia’s High Court ruled that a Roman Catholic newspaper, the Herald, was permitted to use the word Allah to describe God in its Malay language editions.

Muslim groups argue that Christians using a word so closely associated with Islam could be a ploy to win converts.

Christians make up around 9% of the population in the majority Muslim state. Most non-Muslims are ethnically Indian or Chinese.

The row over the use of the word Allah has exposed deep resentments over the treatment of minorities and freedom of religion in Malaysia.

A government minister told foreign diplomats on Monday that the church attacks were the work of extremists.

“These were not just attacks on houses of worship,” he said. “These were attacks on the values and freedoms all Malaysians share.”

Under the slogan “One Malaysia”, the government has made racial harmony a central policy. Its commitment to that policy is now being severely tested.

The “Allah” ban is unusual in the Muslim world. The Arabic word is commonly used by Christians to describe God in such countries as Egypt, Syria and even nearby Indonesia, which is the world’s world’s largest Muslim nation.

கன்னியாஸ்திரியை கொன்ற பாதிரியாருக்கு கடுங்காவல் தண்டனை

கன்னியாஸ்திரியை கொன்ற பாதிரியாருக்கு கடுங்காவல் தண்டனை
கன்னியாஸ்திரியை கொன்ற 71 வயது பாதிரியாருக்கு கடுங்காவல் தண்டனை விதிக்கப்பட்டது.

Ohio priest convicted in nun’s death in court

Associated Press – January 22, 2010 12:05 PM ET

http://www.wfmj.com/Global/story.asp?S=11865061

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) – A Roman Catholic priest convicted of killing a nun appeared by video at a court hearing in Ohio, the first time he’s been seen publicly since his 2006 conviction.

The Rev. Gerald Robinson sat impassively Friday during the hearing in Toledo on whether new evidence can be introduced in his appeal.

The 71-year-old Robinson is being held in Hocking Correctional Facility in southern Ohio. He was convicted of killing of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, whose body was found Easter weekend 1980 in a Toledo hospital where both worked.

Church historians have said it’s the only documented case of a Catholic priest killing a nun.

Robinson is serving a mandatory term of 15 years to life in prison and has maintained his innocence. His new attorneys say his trial lawyers ignored evidence that could have helped his cause.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Married Teacher abducts 17 year old Tuition Student

Cops have a ‘major’ issue on their hands

Gokul VannanFirst Published : 29 Jan 2010 04:11:00 AM ISTLast Updated : 29 Jan 2010 06:16:24 AM IST
CHENNAI: For the parents of Christien Mario Andrew, a 17-year-old Anglo-Indian boy from George Town who is suspected to have run away with his 28-year-old tuition teacher Nasreen, time is running out.
Worried over the police not ‘rescuing’ the boy before March when he will turn 18, they filed a habeas corpus petition at the Madras High Court and a division bench gave the police time till February 8 to trace him.
While the police claimed that they were not able to carry on with the search mainly because Nasreen’s family was not cooperating, the boy’s father Dennis Andrew told Express that the police had made no progress in the case despite the representations made to the City Police Commissioner and several senior police officers.
Andrew’s concern is that if his son is not tracked down before his 18th birthday, they will not be able to ‘retrieve’ him from Nasreen. For, he will turn ‘major’ and have the right to decide if he wants to stay with his family or Nasreen, in whose custody he is suspected to be now as both of them had gone missing the same day on October 1, 2009.
Two days after the boy, a first year BCA student of Patrician College, Adyar, failed to return home from college, Andrew filed a complaint with the Muthialpet police station on October 3 and even named Nasreen of George Town, who was his tuition teacher for one-and-a-half years, as the suspect.
Andrew said Nasreen and his son were initially staying at a house in Kottivakkam. When he and a sub-inspector from Muthialpet police station went there on October 4, a couple in the house assaulted the policeman. Though the police caught hold of Jaffer, a relative of Nasreen who had arranged for the stay in the Kottivakkam house, he was let off on bail subsequently.
Jaffer had confessed to the police that the boy and his tuition teacher had stayed in the house till October 5, Andrew said.
After the court order, Andrew is hopeful that the police will track down his son before February 8.
However, Roy Rozario, president of the Anglo-Indian Suburban Front, said that their community was feeling unsafe following the ‘kidnap’ of the boy.

Couples seek Police Protection

Married couple seeks refuge at Commissionerate

U TejonmayamFirst Published : 29 Jan 2010 04:08:00 AM ISTLast Updated : 29 Jan 2010 06:17:04 AM IST
CHENNAI: A couple sought refuge at the Suburban Police Commissionerate, after their parents objected to their inter-religious marriage, here on Thursday.
The couple S Mohan of Mangadu and S Ramiza Begum of Pammal had fallen in love five years ago, when they were students. Mohan set up a business after his studies while Ramiza stayed at home. Their relationship continued even after the parents came to know about it. Despite facing opposition to their marriage, the couple decided to get married at a temple at Royapettah on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Ramiza’s parents filed a missing person complaint. Suspecting Mohan to have taken her away, Ramiza’s parents changed their complaint to one of kidnap.
“I need protection from the police as I am worried about Ramiza’s parents. We want to live together,” said Mohan. The police commissioner directed the couple to Shankar Nagar police station.

டான் பாஸ்கோ பள்ளி ஆசிரியர் பிளஸ்-2 மாணவி வேளாங்கண்ணிக்கு கடத்திச் சென்று கற்பழித்தாக புகார்

http://www.koodal.com/news/tamilnadu.asp?id=47743&title=missing-students-returns-accuses-teacher-raped-her-tamilnadu-news-headlines-in-tamil

ஆசிரியரால் கடத்தப்பட்ட பிளஸ்-2 மாணவி மீட்பு
ராயபுரம், ஜன. 10-
சென்னையில் ஆசிரியரால் கடத்தப்பட்ட பிளஸ்-2 மாணவி மீட்கப்பட்டார். போலீசாரிடம் அவர் அளித்த வாக்குமூலத்தில், தன்னை ஆசிரியர் வேளாங்கண்ணிக்கு கடத்திச் சென்று கற்பழித்தாக புகார் தெரிவித்துள்ளார்.

சென்னை கொடுங்கையூர் அருகே எருக்கஞ்சேரியில் உள்ள ஒரு தனியார் மேல்நிலைப்பள்ளியில் ஆங்கில ஆசிரியராக பணியாற்றுபவர் அமலன் (வயது 46). அவரிடம் டியூசன் படித்து வந்த, அதே பள்ளியைச் சேர்ந்த பிளஸ்-2 மாணவி லதா (பெயர் மாற்றப்பட்டுள்ளது) என்பவரை கடந்த 5-ந் தேதி அன்று அமலன் கடத்திச் சென்றார். மாணவியை காணவில்லை என்று அவருடைய பெற்றோரும், ஆசிரியரை காணவில்லை என்று அவருடைய மனைவியும் போலீசில் புகார் செய்தனர். உடனே, வடசென்னை போலீஸ் இணை கமிஷனர் சேஷசாயி உத்தரவின் பேரில் 4 தனிப்படைகள் அமைக்கப்பட்டன. பல்வேறு இடங்களில் தனிப்படை போலீசார் தேடுதல் வேட்டை நடத்தினர். ஆனால், போலீசாரிடம் சிக்காமல் பல்வேறு இடங்களில் அவர்கள் தலைமறைவாக சுற்றினர். இந்த நிலையில், மாணவி லதாவுடன் நேற்று முன்தினம் இரவில் சென்னைக்கு அமலன் வந்தார். பின்னர், லதாவை வக்கீல் ஒருவரிடம் ஒப்படைத்து விட்டு தலைமறைவாகி விட்டார். எனவே, மாணவி லதாவை போலீஸ் உதவி கமிஷனர் அலுவலகத்துக்கு அந்த வக்கீல் அழைத்து வந்து போலீசாரிடம் ஒப்படைத்தார்.

அதன் பிறகு, போலீசாரிடம் லதா அளித்த வாக்குமூலத்தில் கூறியதாவது:-

நான் நன்றாக படிப்பேன். பள்ளியில் முதல் மாணவியாக வந்தாலும் மாநில அளவில் அதிக மதிப்பெண்கள் பெற வேண்டும் என்பதே என்னுடைய குறிக்கோள். இதைத் தெரிந்து கொண்ட ஆசிரியர் அமலன், எளிதாக என்னை வசப்படுத்தி விட்டார். அவரிடம் டினிசன் படித்தால் மாநில அளவில் அதிக மதிப்பெண்கள் பெறலாம் என்றார். அவரை, என்னுடைய தந்தை போல நினைத்து அவரிடம் டினிசன் சேர்ந்தேன். சில நாட்களுக்கு முன், வேளாங்கண்ணிக்கு சென்று சிறப்பு ஜெபம் செய்தால் நினைத்தபடி எல்லாம் நடக்கும் என்றும், அதிக மதிப்பெண்களை பெறலாம் என்றும் என்னிடம் கூறினார். மேலும், வீட்டில் யாரிடமும் சொல்லாமல் வருமாறு தெரிவித்தார்.

இவ்வாறு, என்னை ஏமாற்றி வேளாங்கண்ணிக்கு கடத்திச் சென்றார். அங்கு ஒரு லாட்ஜில் அறை எடுத்து தங்கவைத்தார். லாட்ஜ் அறையில் வைத்து என்னை ஆசிரியர் அமலன் கற்பழித்து விட்டார். மேலும், யாரிடமும் அது பற்றி கூற வேண்டாம் என்றும், அவரே என்னை திருமணம் செய்துகொள்வதாகவும் தெரிவித்தார். என் வாழ்க்கையையே அவர் žரழித்து விட்டார். இனிமேல் நான் உயிர் வாழ விரும்பவில்லை என்றும், தற்கொலை செய்து கொள்வேன் என்றும் கூறியதால் என்னை சென்னைக்கு அழைத்து வந்தார். அவருக்கு தெரிந்த ஒரு வக்கீலிடம் என்னை ஒப்படைத்து விட்டு ஓடிவிட்டார். இவ்வாறு மாணவி லதா தெரிவித்தார்.

மாணவி லதாவை ஆசிரியர் அமலன் கற்பழித்ததாக புகார் எழுந்துள்ளதால் மாணவிக்கு மருத்துவ பரிசோதனை செய்ய போலீசார் முடிவு செய்துள்ளனர். மேலும், லதாவை கற்பழித்ததோடு அவரை வக்கீலிடம் ஒப்படைத்து விட்டு தப்பியோடிய அமலனை பிடிக்க போலீசார் தீவிர தேடுதல் வேட்டை நடத்தி வருகின்றனர்.
எழுதியது எழில்

Christians-Answer

மதவாதிகளே, பதில் சொல்லுங்கள்!-2

சு. அறிவுக்கரசு

http://viduthalai.periyar.org.in/20100105/news06.html

(கிறிஸ்டோபர் ஹிட்சின்சின் நூலில் 35 ஆம் கட்டுரை இது)

கிறிஸ்துவ மதத்தின் தத்துங்கள் உண்மைகள் என்று கொஞ்சம் கூட நம்பத்தக்கவையாக இல்லை எனத் தெரிந்த பின்பும் கண்களை மூடிக் கொண்டு வெறுமனே இருப்பது முட்டாள்தனம் அல்லவா? பல நூற்றாண்டுகளுக்கு முன் ஆதி மனி-தர்கள் உலகம் தட்டையென்றும், சொர்க்கம் மேலே உள்ளது என்றும், இந்த உலகத்தை மிகவும் பேராசை கொண்ட சண்டைக்கார தெய்வம் உண்டாக்கி இயக்கி வருகிறதென்றும், அது சொல்கிறபடி நடந்து கொள்ளா-விட்டால் தண்டிக்கும் என்றும் உளறி-யிருப்பவற்றின் அடிப்படையில் ஒருவர் தம் வாழ்க்கையை அமைத்துக் கொள்வது என்பது அடிப்படையான தவறு அல்லவா?

கடவுளுக்கு விடை தருதல் (கி திணீக்ஷீமீஷ்மீறீறீ ஷீ நிஷீபீ) எனும் நூலில் குறிப்பிட்டுள்ள கேள்விகளில் சில மீண்டும் தரப்படுகின்றன. இந்தக் கேள்விகளை உங்களுக்கு நீங்களே கேட்டுக்கொள்ளுங்கள்.

நீங்கள் (எகிப்து நாட்டின்) கெய்-ரோவில் பிறந்திருந்தால் 84 கோடி மக்-களைப் போலவே நீங்களும் முசுலி-மாக இருந்து அல்லாவைத் தவிர வேபறு கடவுள் இல்லை. முகமது அவரின் தூதர் என்று கூறிக் கொண்டிருப்பீர்களா, இல்லையா?

நீங்கள் (இந்தியாவின்) கல்கத்-தாவில் பிறந்திருப்பீர்களேயானால், 65 கோடி இந்துக்களில் ஒருவராக, வேதங்களையும், உபநிஷத்துகளையும் புனிதமாகப் போற்றி, எதிர்காலத்தில் நிர்-வாண நிலையை அடையும் எண்ணத்-தில் இருந்திருப்பீர்களா, இல்லையா?

நீங்கள் ஜெருசலத்தில் பிறந்தி-ருந்தால், 130 லட்சம் யூதர்களில் ஒருவராக, யேவாதான் கடவுள் என்றும் டோரா – தான் கடவுளின் வாக்கு என்-றும் சொல்லிக் கொண்டிருப்பீர்களா, இல்லையா?

நீங்களே (சீனாவில்) பீகிங்கில் பிறந்திருப்பீர்களேயானால் கோடிக்-கணக்கானவர்களைப் போல, புத்தர் அல்லது கன்பூஷியஸ், அல்லது லாவோட்சே ஆகியோர்களின் போதனைகளை ஏற்று அதனைப் பின் பற்றி வாழ்ந்திருப்பீர்கள்,அல்லவா?

உங்கள் பெற்றோர்கள் கிறித்து-வர்-கள் என்பதால்தானே நீங்களும் கிறித்துவராக இருக்கிறீர்கள்? (எழு-தியவர் தம் நாட்டில் உள்ள மதத்-தவர்களைப் பார்த்துக் கேட்கிறார்.)

கடவுள் அன்பானவர் என்றால் – ஏன் அவர் பூகம்பம், வறட்சி, வெள்-ளம், சூறைச் சுழற்காற்று போன்ற இயற்கை இடர்ப்பாடுகளை உற்பத்தி செய்து ஆயிரக் கணக்கான ஆண்கள், பெண்கள், குழந்தைகள் என ஒவ்வோர் ஆண்டும் சாகடிக்கப்பட அனுமதிக்-கிறார்?

சர்வசக்தி வாய்ந்த அன்பு மய-மான கடவுள் என்றால் – அவர் ஏன் மூளை அழற்சி, பெரு மூளை முடக்கு நோய், மூளைப் புற்று, குட்டம், அல்-ஜிமர்ஸ் போன்ற பல கொடும் நோய்-களை லட்சக்கணக்கான மக்களுக்குப் பீடிக்கச் செய்து ஆண், பெண், குழந்-தைகள் என்று அமைதியான மக்-களைச் சாகடிக்க வேண்டும்?

வானுலகத்தில் வாழும் அன்பே உருவான கடவுள், ஏன் மதக் கருத்து-களை ஒப்புக் கொள்ள மறுக்கிற மனி-தர்-களைத் தண்டித்துத் தள்ளுவற்-கா-கவே நரகத்தைப் படைக்க வேண்டும்? அப்படி நரகத்தில் தள்ளி கடைசிவரை ஏன் கொடுமைப்படுத்த வேண்டும்?

பைபிள் மீது நம்பிக்கை வைத்-திருக்கும் கிறித்துவ மதத்தில் ஏன் நூற்-றுக்கணக்கான பிரிவுகள்? தனித்-தனி-யான மக்கள் கூட்டம் ஏன்? மற்ற-வரின் நம்பிக்கை பொய்யானது என ஒருவர்க்கொருவர் குற்றம் சாற்றிக் கொள்வதேன்?

கிறித்துவர்கள் எல்லாரும் ஒரே கடவுளைத்தான் வணங்குகிறார்கள் எனும்போது, மதப் பிரிவு சம்பந்தமான வேறுபாடுகளை ஒதுக்கி வைத்துவிட்டு ஒருவரோடு ஒருவர் கூட்டுறவு கொள்ளாமல் இருப்பது ஏன்?

கடவுள் அன்புமயமான தந்தை என்றால் – தன் குழந்தைகளின் பிரார்த்தனைகளை நிறைவேற்றாதது ஏன்?

தொடங்கிய காலத்திலிருந்து பல கோடிக்கணக்கான ஆண்டுகளாகப் பரிணாம வளர்ச்சி பெற்று இன்றைய நிலையை உயிரினங்கள் அடைந்துள்-ளன என்று அறிவியல் அறிஞர்கள் நிரூபித்திருக்கும் நிலையில், இந்த உலகமும் உயிர்களும் ஆறே நாள்களில் படைக்கப்பட்டன எனும் பைபிள் கருத்தை எப்படி நம்ப முடியும்?

ஆதிமனிதனை கர்த்தர் மண்ணைப் பிசைந்து உண்டாக்கினார் என்றும் அவனது விலா எலும்பில் இருந்து பெண்ணைப் படைத்தார் என்றும் கூறப்படுவதை அறிவுள்ள மனிதர்கள் ஏற்க முடியுமா?

தன் மகனை உலகில் ஒரு மனி-தனாக நடமாடச் செய்வதற்காகவே உலகைப் படைத்த கடவுள் ஒரு பாலஸ்தீனப் பெண்ணைத் தாமே பிள்ளைத் தாய்ச்சியாக்கினார் என்பதை நம்ப முடியுமா?

கடவுள் பொறாமை பிடித்-தவர் என்று பைபிள் கூறுகிறது. அந்தக் கடவுள்தான, எங்கும் நிறைந்த, எல்-லாம் வல்ல, எல்லா ஆற்றலும் படைத்-தவராக நிரந்தரமானவராக இருந்து எல்லாவற்றையும் படைத்தவர் என்ற நிலையில் இருக்கும்போது அவர் யாரைக் கண்டு பொறாமைப் பட-வேண்டும்.

உலகில் பல கோடி மக்கள் பட்டினியாலும் துன்பத்தாலும் துய-ருறும் போது, கிறித்துவர்கள் ஏன் தேவாலயங்களுக்காகவும் மடால-யங்களுக்காகவும் பெருந்தொகை-களைச் செலவிட்டு, ஏழை எளியவர்-களை ஏறெடுத்தும் பார்க்காமல் இருப்பது ஏன்?

வறண்டநிலத்தில் வாழும் கோடிக்கணக்கான மக்கள், மழை இல்லாத காரணத்தால் பட்டினியால் சாகும் நிலை இருக்கும்போது, சர்வ சக்தி படைத்த கடவுள் ஏன் மழை-யைக் கூடத் தராமல், அவர்களைச் சாகடிக்கிறது?

மனித குலம் முழுமைக்குமான தந்தை எனப்படும் கடவுள், ஏன் தனக்கு என தெரிந்தெடுக்கப்பட்ட மக்-களை (சிலீஷீமீஸீ றிமீஷீஜீறீமீ) பொறுக்கி எடுத்து மற்றவர்களை விட அவர்-களுக்கு மட்டும் சலுகை காட்டுவது ஏன்?

திருமண உறவைத் தாண்டி கள்ள உறவு (கிபீறீமீக்ஷீஹ்) வைக்கக்கூடாது எனக் கண்டிக்கும் கடவுள், 700 மனைவி-களையும் 300 வைப்பாட்டிகளையும் வைத்-திருந்த மன்னரை ஆசீர்வதித்து மேலும் வளமாக வாழ்வதற்கு ஏன் அனுமதித்தார்?

கிறித்துவ தேவாலயங்களில் பணி புரிபவர்கள் முழுவதும் ஆண்களாக மட்டுமே இருந்து கொண்டு, பெண்-களைப் பாதிரியாக, பிஷப் ஆக, ஆர்ச் பிஷப் ஆக, கர்டினல் ஆக, போப் ஆக வருவதற்கு ஏன் அனுமதிப்பதில்லை?

ஏசு தன்னைப் பின்பற்றுபவர்-களி-டம் கடைசிக் காலத்தில் உலகம் முழுவதும் சென்று பைபிளில் கூறப்-படும் வேதக் கருத்தை எல்லா உயிர்களிடத்தும் எடுத்துச் செல்லுங்கள்; நான் எப்போதும் உங்களுடனே இருப்பேன் எனக் கூறி-னாராம். அதன் பின்னும், 2 ஆயிரம் ஆண்டுகளுக்குப் பிறகும், இன்றைய தேதிவரை, கோடிக்கணக்கான மக்கள் கிறித்துவ வேதத்தைக் கேட்காமலேயே இருக்கிறார்களே ஏன்? எப்படி?

(கிறித்துவக் கொள்கைகளைப் பின்பற்றாமல் இந்து, இசுலாமிய, பவுத்த, பார்சி, சீக்கிய, யூத மதங்களைப் பின்-பற்றிடும் கோடானுகோடி மக்கள் இருப்பது ஏன்?)

(கட்டுரையாளர் சார்லஸ் டெம்-பிள்டன் 86 ஆண்டுகள் வாழ்ந்து 2001 இல் மறைந்தவர். உலகத்தில் பிரபலமான கிறித்துவ மதப் பிரச்சாரகரான (அண்மையில் பெங்களூரு வந்துபோன) பில்லி கிரகாம் என்பாரின் நண்பர். (மறைந்த டி.ஜி.எஸ்.தினகரன், நம் தமிழர் தலைவரின் நண்பர் என்பது நினைவு கூரத்தக்கது).

கிறிஸ்துவ அனாதை இல்ல குழந்தைக் கடத்தல்கள் குழந்தை வியாபாரங்கள்

DNA test proves identity of Belgians biological mother

http://lite.epaper.timesofindia.com/mobile.aspx?article=yes&pageid=4&edlabel=TOICH&mydateHid=27-01-2010&pubname=&edname=&articleid=Ar00402&format=&publabel=TOI

Chennai: Esther, an Indian from Chennai adopted by Belgian nationals in 1982, came back to the city in an attempt to trace her family. To her pleasant surprise, she managed to find her mother and sister in the city.
Its a feeling beyond expression , said Esther, holding her mother Susheelas hand, as her sister Uma looked on at a press conference on Tuesday. I wont be staying here because I find the culture different from that of my upbringing , but I will keep coming back. I want to make my mothers life better and possibly take my sister and her family on a trip to Belgium, she said.
For Susheela, who was gearing up for a legal fight to get her daughter back, it was a godsend. Susheela, then living in Tiruvannamalai with an abusive husband, had admitted her daughter to a childrens home run by Mani in Perambur. I admitted Gomathi to the home in 1982 and visited her every month for a year. Then, the pastor told me that Gomathi had been sent to Belgium and that she would return when she turned 18. I consoled myself, said Susheela . For four years, the pastor showed me photos of the child and the letters by the Belgian couple who adopted her. The letters stopped after four years. I got suspicious when the pastor told me that the Belgians stopped contacting him, she said. Susheela filed a petition in 2008 with the social welfare department to trace her daughter . I dont want to proceed against the home that sent away my child, she said.
Bhawanesh Deora, who runs the NGO Shreyans Foundation , said a DNA test had established that Susheela was Esthers biological mother.
Susheela is now happy, and sad Esther will board a flight to Belgium on Wednesday.

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES: Esther (right) with her foster father Maurice; Esthers biological mother Susheela (inset)

A business in babies

Adoption agencies thrive on “human trade” as the practice of selling female babies continues among the Lambadas on the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border.

RAVI SHARMA
in Konchavaram, Tandur & Hyderabad

“WHY do you want to take only my new-born daughter? Take all four of my daughters.” Shivram Yadav was not being sarcastic. Nor was there any trace of remorse in his voice. Coming from a man who earns Rs.20 a day as and when he finds work as a daily wage earner, it was the expression of a bitter reality he and other members of the Lambada community had been coping with for long. The 35-year-old unlettered man from Wantichinta tanda (hamlet), 140 km from Hyderabad, sold his fifth child, a girl, a year ago for Rs.600. “What can I do? Gooribai (a Lambada woman from a nearby tanda) came and said ‘you are poor, you can’t look after your daughter. I will look after her and send her to school’. So I gave the child,” Shivram Yadav said. Kamalabai, his wife, said that she was unable to eat for 15 days after giving away her child.

A large number of Lambadas live in tandas that dot the Konchavaram reserved forests on either side of the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border. They are steeped in poverty and the practice of abandoning or giving up their female babies is common among them. They do it now increasingly, for a price. Middlemen often posing as social workers or well-wishers “buy” the babies and hand them over to adoption centres. The tandas are mostly located in arid, inhospitable areas like Gulbarga district in northern Karnataka and Ranga Reddy district in Andhra Pradesh. Each tanda has a population of between 1,000 and 2,000, the majority being Lambadas. There are around 100 tandas in the Konchavaram forest area. The Lambadas, who speak Gorboli, a mixture of Hindi, Rajasthani and Gujarati, originally migrated to the Konchavaram forests from Rajasthan.

RAVI SHARMA
Changibai of Wantichinta tanda with her two remaining daughters.

The literacy rate among the Lambadas is lower than 20 per cent. Girls, if they go to school, do not study beyond Class V. Maruti Chauhan, a Lambada and a teacher at the Government Higher Primary School in Dharmasagar tanda, said the children do not attend school regularly. “They are used by the families to work in the fields.”

Agricultural work being seasonal, the rate of unemployment is high among the Lambadas. Their traditional occupations of collecting minor forest produce and cattle grazing have been curtailed in recent years after Konchavaram was declared a reserved forest. One of their long-standing demands is that they be given contracts to collect forest produce and sell them through societies run by them. They allege that persons from Andhra Pradesh have been cornering the contracts.

Health care facilities are woefully inadequate in the tandas. The primary health centres are understaffed and ill-equipped. Schemes such as the Karnataka Border Area Development Programme have not benefited them much.

Shocking instances of trade in female babies came to light following the arrest of Christopher Vinod of Hyderabad by the Andhra Pradesh Police on March 22. He was travelling by car to Hyderabad with three female babies. On being questioned, he was not able to tell the police about either the antecedents or destination of the babies. According to the police, he confessed later that he was taking them to the St. Teresa’s Tender Loving Care Home (TLCH), a recognised adoption centre in Hyderabad. But Sister Teresa Maria, the chief coordinator of the TLCH, denied having met Vinod ever. She, however, said that Vinod could have brought the babies to the TLCH after an adoption centre at Tandur, 110 km from Hyderabad, refused to accept them, citing the poor state of their health. “He couldn’t take them back to the parents, so he could have brought them to us,” she said.

An accomplice of Vinod, Parvathibai, a Lambada from Zilvarsha tanda, was also arrested. Both claimed that the babies had been handed over to them by their parents.

A visit to the tandas shows that it does not take much to convince Lambadas to hand over newborn female children to such middlemen. The majority of them being unlettered, impoverished and burdened with huge families, Lambadas consider female children to be dispensable. The traditional belief that only male children can be sent to work and the fact that a relatively large sum of money (between Rs.40,000 to Rs.60,000) has to be paid as dowry have also contributed to the practice of selling female children. The women wait for the birth of at least one male child before undergoing sterilisation. (Curiously, several Lambada women told this correspondent that they had children even after undergoing tubectomy.) Most of the women complained that their husbands would get drunk and beat them for not giving birth to a male child.

Said Poonibai, 28, from Chindanur tanda, who gave away her female child just four days after birth in February: “When my fifth daughter was born, my husband was away in Mumbai working as a daily wage earner. I had no money. What can I do with another daughter? Who will pay the dowry? Parvathibai said she will look after the baby and send her to school; she even promised me that she would send my daughter to see me when she grows up. So I gave the baby away and took Rs.500.”

Changibai, 25, of Wantichinta tanda lost her husband Limbaji last year, and her second husband deserted her a few months ago after she gave birth to a female child. She said: “I already had two daughters and what can I do with one more? So I gave away my baby to Gooribai who paid me Rs.500. She said that she would send her to school and later give her for adoption.”

RAVI SHARMA
At the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home at Tandur, Andhra Pradesh.

Similar were the stories of Baiamma, Sakabai and Gopibai of Dharmasagar tanda. They said that Parvathibai and Christopher Vinod had visited their tanda many times and promised to take their babies to the Konchavaram residential school or to give them for adoption to a “good home”.

As two of the babies that were with Vinod at the time of his arrest were from tandas located on the Karnataka side of the border, the Karnataka Police, along with their Andhra Pradesh counterparts, have been investigating the matter. The Karnataka Police claimed that they had identified 19 babies who were taken from tandas in Karnataka to adoption homes in Andhra Pradesh. But when the police took the babies to their mothers they refused to take them back.

THE roles played by middlemen and adoption centres have come into focus. Middlemen, after paying money to the parents, take the babies to adoption centres in Andhra Pradesh. According to them, the babies are mainly meant for inter-country adoption. It is not clear whether the adoption centres follow the guidelines set by the Supreme Court in 1984 and also the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), a regulatory body under the Union Ministry of Social Justice. Shanta Reddy, member of the National Commission for Women who visited five recognised inter-country adoption centres, said: “I suspect that some mischief is going on in some of these adoption centres. In many cases there is no record to show where some of the babies are sent.”

According to Alok Kumar, Superintendent of Police, Gulbarga, Gooribai and Parvathibai stated that they supplied babies regularly to, among others, Vinod and the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home, a recognised adoption centre at Tandur in Andhra Pradesh. But with corroborative evidence hard to come by and in the absence of specific provisions in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to deal with the problem of people securing babies for adoption, it would be difficult to take action against Vinod, Gooribai and Parvathibai. The police have booked cases against them under Section 373 of the IPC. This provision pertains to the buying and selling of a minor child for the purpose of prostitution. But it would be difficult to prove that prostitution was the motive behind their securing babies.

The lack of legal provisions to punish the culprits in such instances has hampered the work of the police. The fate of an inquiry launched by the Criminal Investigation Department of the Andhra Pradesh Police in 1999 into similar cases is not known. Two institutions – the Good Samaritan Evangelical and Welfare Association and the Action for Social Development – were raided and their licences to facilitate inter-country adoptions was suspended (Frontline, May 7, 1999).

Based on the confessions of Gooribai and Parvathibai, the Karnataka Police visited the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home on April 6 to arrest its co-founder, Savitridevi Samson. But she gave the police the slip by telling them that she was going to offer prayers. She is said to have escaped to Hyderabad. The police suspect that Savitridevi, a United States green card holder, might have fled to the U.S. The police could also not arrest Savitridevi’s former husband, Robert Mahendran, co-founder of the Home. According to the police, Mahendran fell out with Savitridevi and, along with Vinod (who previously worked for the Home) and one Peter Subbiah, started a Hyderabad-based network to secure babies from the tandas. The ’success’ of this group is said to have prompted its rivals to inform the police about Vinod’s car ride on March 22.

The Karnataka Police, which arrested Sudarshan and Varaprasad, the legal adviser and the caretaker of the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home respectively, claimed that it has evidence of fabrication and falsification of documents relating to the antecedents of the child, its relinquishment and its adoption at the Home. Said Alok Kumar, who visited both the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home and the TLCH, “There is serious violation of Supreme Court guidelines and there are many procedural lapses. For example, the biological parents who relinquish the child have to be counselled against it. But many a time the real parents are nowhere in the picture. ‘Parents’ arranged for the purpose affix their signatures.”

Many adoption centres have also had their recognition renewed despite their having violated the Supreme Court guidelines.

According to Shanta Reddy, as per the records 18 babies died at the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home in the last four months of 2000. But there were no authentic death certificates. Pointing out that there were discrepancies between the records maintained by the Home and the Secretary of the Voluntary Coordinating Agency (VCA) (part of the regulatory system that was established following the Supreme Court order), Shanta Reddy accused the VCA of having given permission for adoption in one case even after the death of the child. She also pointed out: “The number of inter-country adoptions claimed to have been done by the St.Theresa’s Tender Loving Care Home is a lot higher than the list produced by the VCA.”

Shanta Reddy expressed surprise over the fact that many babies received from the tandas had been sent for inter-country adoption. “The adoption centres say that since the skin of the baby is dark, Indian couples won’t take them, but babies from both the TLCH and the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home are fair-skinned. It is obvious that inter-country adoption brings in the funds, subsidising in many institutions the hospitalisation costs of all the babies and the procedures for Indian adoptions. Each baby sent for inter-country adoption brings the centre, by their own admission, at least $3,000. Besides this they are given liberal donations.”

Prem Kumar, secretary of the VCA, claimed that during his last visit to the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home, in February, things looked all right. On the allegation that he had permitted the adoption of a baby girl who had died, Prem Kumar said that the details of the case were made known to him only in February 2001, several months after the incident took place. He stressed that the file on each baby was maintained meticulously and periodic reports from foreign nationals were received regularly. Admitting that there were “small problems,” he said that the “VCA did not have much power to stem wrongdoing”.

However, Frontline learnt that each inter-country adoption fetches the agency around $7,000 and the money is received abroad. (CARA has approved the collection of Rs.150 a day from the adopting parents from the day the baby enters the centre until the time it is adopted.)

Centres like the TLCH maintain that they will have to take into account the money spent on looking after the babies, most of them sick and malnourished, from the time of their arrival. Said Sister Maria: “VCA clearance takes nearly a year; plus there are costs like visa fees, which add up to Rs.15,000. And anyway all the healthy babies go to Indian couples; it is only the older, sickly or deformed babies that go abroad.”

Admitting that the rules are bent at times, Sister Maria said that this was done only on humanitarian grounds. “If I stick to the rules and turn away a sick baby it may die or it could even be killed.” Recollecting a recent visit to a Lambada house in Devarakonde, near Hyderabad, Sister Maria said that she saw newly born twin girls being eaten by ants. When she wanted to take the babies to the TLCH, the family members asked for a gold chain. “They said ‘people come here and give money, why don’t you also do so?’ We refused and went back. A week later I got a call from the same family, telling us that the babies were in a bad condition and that we could take them. I asked themhem to hire a taxi and come. The babies were nursed back and were adopted by a Jewish Italian man. At most we pay the taxi charges in such cases.”//

THE ADOPTION MARKET- ASHA KRISHNAKUMAR

A Frontline investigation lays bare a multi-billion-dollar, countrywide racket in inter-country adoption of children, run by private adoption agencies that exploit the loopholes in the rules.

http://www.thehindu.com/fline/fl2211/stories/20050603006700400.htm

P. GOUTHAM

A new-born female child, which was sold by her mother in Salem, in the arms of her sisters after she was restored to the family by the district administration in 2002.

THE arrest in Chennai on May 3, 2005, of five kidnappers, who have sold over 350 children to an adoption agency in the city over many years; the inquiry ordered by the Delhi government into the process of inter-country adoptions in 10 agencies in the Capital; and the recent moves in Andhra Pradesh to book Shalini Misra, a former Director of the Women Development and Child Welfare Department, who had cracked the adoption racket in the State in 1999, under the SC/ST Atrocities Prevention Act, have blown the lid off a massive adoption racket in the country. Trade in inter-country adoptions, in particular, appears to be a “roaring business” for some unscrupulous agencies.

In 1999, the country was shocked by the revelation of an inter-country adoption racket in Andhra Pradesh when S. Peter Subbiah of Good Samaritan Evangelical Social Welfare Association was found buying and selling babies. Around the same time, similar stories emerged from Tamil Nadu’s Salem district, from where the police arrested five persons on complaints of stealing four babies from the government hospital. The babies were found in an adoption agency in Chennai. The commodification of children should have ended with such revelations. But it has not.

Frontline investigation and the documents obtained in the process show that such revelations are only the tip of the iceberg. With some exceptions, inter-country adoption is a can of worms. Some unscrupulous agencies have made India an international baby shopping centre.

Papers are forged and guidelines violated as babies are matched rapidly with foreign parents. Touts of private adoption agencies hunt for vulnerable families. Often, the mother has little negotiating power. For as little as Rs.150-500, a new-born is handed over to touts who are paid about Rs.6,000 a baby by the agencies. Mothers who go to reclaim their babies are turned away. Some agencies look the other way from the trafficking, stealing, and buying of babies.

Children are sold abroad by providing false information about them, falsifying documents, and making use of loopholes in the adoption guidelines prescribed by the Supreme Court. Some agencies also make bargain offers to adoptive parents for the wholesale purchase of babies; while some others seem to blackmail those who refuse to increase the purchase price of babies. Western placement agencies collect payment far in excess of the actual adoption costs, routing a portion of this to the Indian adoption agency.

While only an estimated 15-20 per cent of adoption agencies seem to indulge in the racket, the gravity of the situation must not be underestimated. There is an urgent need to restructure and reform the system of adoption in India.

Inter-country adoption (ICA), which began primarily as an ad hoc humanitarian response to children orphaned by the Second World War, who could not find a family to care for them in their own country, is now a complex social phenomena that has lent itself to serious abuse. It is substantially commercialised. Several intermediaries have turned it into a profitable business indulging in fraud and illegal and unethical practices. In such cases, the total disregard for the children being adopted turns them to mere commodities.

P. GOUTHAM

A baby at the Tamil Nadu government’s cradle baby centre in Salem.

Globally, over the past three decades, 2,65,677 babies, most of them from 10 countries – China, Russia, India, Ukraine, Vietnam, Romania, S. Korea, Cambodia, Gautemala and Kazakhstan – have been placed in ICA. These adoptions have risen from about 9,000 in 1992 to over 20,000 in 2002. Among the sending countries, India holds a prominent position. The United States ranks first among the receiving nations, accounting for over half of all ICAs worldwide. ICAs from developing countries happen primarily with the demand for children increasing in developed countries and the supply rising commensurately from the developing countries.

The demand for children increases in developed countries owing to fertility declines, the greater availability of contraceptive aids, the legalisation of abortion, higher participation of women in the workforce, the rise in the age of marriage, the postponement of childbirth and state support for single mothers. The supply rises in the developing countries owing to an increasing number of orphaned and abandoned children because of poor and worsening socio-economic conditions. According to Hyderabad-based Gita Ramaswamy, who has done extensive research on adoptions in India, the process now represents in many ways the convergence of demand and supply. “To cut the going global rate of $22,000-$25,000 per child, international adopters come to India to shop for babies, available at a fourth of this price,” she says.

As many as 255 foreign adoption agencies (of which 131 are government bodies) and 74 Indian placement agencies are recognised by the Government of India for ICA. There is no legislation that covers inter-country adoption. There are only rules laid down by the Supreme Court in a series of judgments, most notably the 1984 case of Laxmikant Pandey v. Union of India. The Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), set up by the government in the wake of this judgment, implements and monitors ICA; it is also the nodal agency in respect of adoption in India. According to the Supreme Court judgment, CARA is expected to act as a “clearing house of information” related to children available for ICA.

Voluntary Coordinating Agencies (VCAs) in the States are supposed to ensure that children are first offered for Indian adoption (in line with the Supreme Court guidelines) and if this fails to happen within a stipulated timeframe, clear the children to CARA for inter-country adoption. No agency in India can proceed with ICA without a `no objection certificate’ from CARA. There are several checks and balances to ensure that inter-country adoptions are done in the best interest of the child.

However, in addition to the loopholes in the CARA rules that are exploited with impunity, there is a nexus among agencies, middlemen, and the authorities that makes a mockery of the rules. While adoption has certainly benefited thousands of Indian children and parents, and is done with a lot of care and passion by some agencies, many institutions violate the child’s most basic rights in the pursuit of money.

A series of scandals uncovered in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu over the past few years is finally laying bare the inter-country adoption network throughout the country.

“Inter-country Adoption”, an international study by the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) research institute, International Child Development Centre in Florence, Italy, is one of the most extensive pieces of research on the subject. It brings into the open the “large-scale abuses of the spirit and procedures of inter-country adoptions.” According to the study: “During the adoption process, violations of the most basic rights of the child can occur. These violations are often perpetrated under the cover of the supposedly humanitarian aim of the act and `justified’ by the simplistic view that the child will somehow always be `better off’ in a rich country. Illegal acts and malpractice involve criminal networks, intermediaries of all kinds, and couples prepared to carry out, to be accomplice to, tolerate, or simply ignore abuses in order to secure an adoption. The diversity of the methods used and the range of actors demonstrate the complexity of the task of protecting the rights of the child in inter-country adoption. The challenge is greater in that in many, if not most, cases the resulting adoption bears all the hallmarks of a perfectly legal procedure.”

The UNICEF report points to a number of ways in which inter-country adoption is abused using illegal, unethical, and clandestine methods. Frontline investigation shows that all these methods are practised by some agencies in India doing flourishing business in ICAs:

Obtaining children illegally

P.V. SIVAKUMAR

A February 2002 picture showing Andhra Pradesh Minister for Women and Child Welfare S. Saraswati (left) and Director of the Women Development and Child Welfare Department Shalini Misra (right) performing `Annaparasana’ for babies rescued from an adoption centre in Hyderabad.

*Abducting babies by a variety of methods, including organised kidnapping as is clear from the Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh experience.

*Identifying vulnerable mothers – from poor families, unwed or single – and enticing them to give up their babies. The pressure may be exerted before the birth, at the maternity clinic or hospital, or in the adoption agency, which may house the mother till delivery. Such pressure is also reinforced by free pre- and post-natal care. For example, a children’s home in a Chennai suburb runs a short-stay home for deserted, destitute and abandoned women. It takes particular interest in rehabilitating unwed mothers who give away their children in adoption.

*Falsely informing the mother that her baby was stillborn or died shortly after birth so as to spirit away the infant. For example, agencies operate from within the hospital premises in New Delhi, according to the findings of an inquiry conducted by the Delhi government of 10 agencies.

*Buying children from poor families, for example, from the Lambada tribes in Andhra Pradesh.

*Accepting financial or material rewards for the adoption agency in exchange for children. This seems a common practice among some agencies, as is clear from the letters sent to Indian officials by foreign adopters. In fact, an adoption agency in Chennai admits that the money got from foreign adoptions pays for the maintenance of the institution, and also the orphanage/school it runs.

*Offering women financial incentives to conceive a child specifically for adoption abroad and luring poor women to sell their babies.

Such instances were reported among the Lambada tribe of Andhra Pradesh. Says Shalini Misra, former director, in the Andhra Pradesh Women Development and Child Welfare Department, who shut down many agencies that prepared children for overseas adoptions in Hyderabad after a scandal broke out in 2001: “I saw a chain of agents luring the Lambada tribal women when they were pregnant.” The agents said: “If it’s a male child, you keep it, no problem; but if it’s a girl, you won’t be able to keep her because of your poverty, so give her to us and we will take care of her and give you money.” Middlemen routinely lied. Mothers were told that they could visit regularly, that their children would be given an education and a chance to move up in society. But actually, the children were to be sent overseas. “This practice was widespread, allowing Hyderabad adoption agencies to amass substantial illicit funds,” she said. According to Shalini Misra, American parents paid Rs.500,000 to Rs.2.5 million to adopt a child purchased from tribal families for a meagre amount.

*Providing misleading information to the biological parent(s) on the consequences of adoption to obtain their consent. This includes assuring them, or allowing them to believe, that they will be able to maintain links with, or receive news of, the child after adoption.

*Providing false information to prospective adopters. The U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs, for instance, cautions that one of the most common adoption frauds involves intermediaries who offer a supposedly healthy child for adoption knowing that the child is seriously ill. This is revealed by letters from parents who had adopted from some agencies in India.

Illegally securing permission to adopt

*Falsifying, or falsely obtaining “free for adoption” certificate from the appropriate authorities using loopholes in the rules. According to former CARA Chairperson and honorary general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Indian Council for Child Welfare Andal Damodaran, routine checks at an adoption agency in Coimbatore revealed that it was using loopholes such as falsely matching siblings in order to send children abroad.

*The “child relinquishing letters” supposed to be given by the biological parents or guardians seem to have been signed by the same person, faked, or not signed at all. Yet the magistrates authorised to certify the letter seem to have counter-signed the certificate. This was found in some agencies in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

*Collusion of officials to help agencies with inter-country adoptions.

For example, a Coimbatore adoption agency was hurriedly issued a licence in 2003 without following the mandated procedure of it being registered with the Department of Social Welfare for a minimum of three years. The inspection report of CARA, after the agency’s licence expired last year, revealed enormous deficiencies in the operations of the institution.

The agency, at the time of CARA inspection on October 6, 2002, had a 13-day-old baby with no records. The authorities also observed that the institution had not made enough effort to identify the Indian parents. However, the institution was given an inter-country adoption licence on June 19, 2003; an application was even made to CARA for recognising the agency to operate as the second VCA in Tamil Nadu, supported by officials in the Department of Social Welfare.

This apart, despite the July 2, 2004 CARA inspection report that says that the agency has indulged in “unethical practices” and its “registration is not proper,” its ICA licence was renewed last month. The report also points to most children from the agency being sent to one Washington-based agency, International Families Incorporated, whose executive director is Mrudula Rao, mother of the treasurer of the Indian agency. E. Ramana Rao, the treasurer’s father, has donated “most of the funds to the agency,” which is an “unethical practice,” the report observes.

Circumventing the adoption process

*In some cases, relatives or `fake’ mothers signed away a child they were temporarily caring for, pretending to be the biological parents.

*In some cases, the biological mother and the adoptive parents actively collude: The former registers in hospital in the adoptive mother’s name or assigns paternity to the prospective adoptive father. In such a case the official act of adoption is eliminated altogether.

In several places, the government’s `children homes’ are run by adoption agencies. For instance, the children’s home in Sambajinagar (Maharashtra) is run by a Pune-based adoption agency. In early 2004, when a team of health workers from the Municipal Corporation went there for a surprise check, it was not allowed entry. However, after government intervention, when it finally managed to get in, the team found children to be in poor health; many of them were malnourished and polio-affected (10 out of 66; Daily Samana, January 5, 2004). This raises an important question: Why is the government letting adoption agencies run children’s homes?

According to researcher Gita Ramaswamy, “a multi-billion dollar international adoption industry is getting exposed.” According to her, for many agencies inter-country adoption is the bread and butter. They adopt various means to circumvent the rules, aided by some unscrupulous officials.

Using loopholes in CARA guidelines

CARA guidelines insist that “at least half of all adoptions done by any agency that is recognised for ICA should be in-country,” and that “only after the VCA is unable to place the baby in the country within 30 days and clears the baby for inter-country adoption can the agencies place the baby in adoption outside the country after obtaining an NoC from CARA.” But significantly, the guideline exempts from this procedure siblings, special-needs children, and children over six. This is the loophole most abused. However, many Indian adopters now are also asking for siblings and special-needs children.

There have been instances of agencies bringing together unrelated children and declaring them siblings. This helps agencies not only get past the VCA but also earn double for placing two children in adoption. They also get around the “at least 50 per cent in-country adoption” rule.

Most times, the period of 60 days stipulated earlier (it is now reduced to 30) is not sufficient for the VCA to locate an Indian adopter and, almost by default, the child is given clearance for inter-country adoption. Agencies also manage to force the VCA into situations where it has no choice but to clear normal babies for inter-country adoption. According to former Tamil Nadu VCA member Vidya Reddy, agencies plan and co-ordinate their application for clearance at the same time so that the VCA is inundated with proposals. With inadequate time and staff, the VCA finds it difficult to locate Indian adopters within the stipulated time.

According to Andal Damodaran in “Adoption in India – Past, Present and Future,” a paper presented at an International Conference on Adoption in Adelaide, April 2004, although the guidelines of the Supreme Court and CARA provide a number of safeguards, “we are constantly faced with deviations, which flout various ethical principles including the adoptability of the child, costs and short-cutting of procedures.”

Follow-up reports of children placed in adoption for the mandated period after adoption are rarely done. According to Gita Ramaswamy, while in some cases there is close mandated scrutiny by courts, by and large they have become a mere `rubber-stamping’ institution.

Says Andal Damodaran in her conference paper: “Often, there seems to be lacunae in the preparation of the child and prospective adoptive parents. The history of the child is not fully recorded. In many cases the prospective adoptive parents are not counselled adequately on the likely difficulties they may encounter.” She adds: “Market tactics are often used to deal with adoption. The `supply’ rises to meet `demand’, there is `highest bidding’, `retainer fees’, `expected annual turnover’ and so on contrary to the child-centric objective of adoption.”

According to Vidya Reddy, agencies invariably view the procedures for getting “abandoned” certificate (as opposed to “surrender” documents) as cumbersome paperwork. Most times, the documents are forged or gone through in haste. Gita Ramaswamy agrees, pointing out that in Andhra Pradesh government officials and their apparatus were aiding these agencies; instead of questioning infringements of procedures, they turn a blind eye or collude in the questionable practices in some cases. She says that institutions such as the VCA and CARA, in a way, failed to perform their duties. Activists also accuse CARA of giving clearances mechanically, despite having access to all the documents.

Ironically, in Andhra Pradesh, a charge-sheet has been filed against a former VCA Secretary for alleged involvement in the adoption racket. And the Indian Council of Social Welfare, which was also found guilty of a number of adoption malpractices by the State government, which investigated the adoption racket in 2000, was one of the scrutinising agencies for ICA. The scrutinising agency examines the application for guardianship made on behalf of the foreign parents; now Indian parents are also scrutinised.

Activists such as Gita Ramaswamy demand a thorough revamp of the complex adoption process to make it transparent and child-centric. She regrets that even the legal system has failed to pull up the offending placement agencies. The court-appointed scrutinising agency overlooked obvious breach of procedural regulations, while family courts passed orders without scrutinising the documents. She says: “In the entire system there was no one actually speaking for the child. Most are focussed on getting the child out of the country in the quickest possible time. Many foreign adopters have mentioned this (the quickness of the process) as their reason for choosing India to adopt a child.”

According to Andal Damodaran, there are the honourable exceptions throughout the country. One is the Chennai-based Bala Mandir that has been working as a juvenile home and orphanage from the 1950s. The majority of children here are not free for adoption. According to a social worker, most children in Bala Mandir have one parent, a grandparent, aunt, or some relative, with whom the child has a bond. Only in rare cases of abandonment and even rarer cases of surrender do children become available for adoption here. In fact, according to Sujata Mody, who has done extensive research on adoption in Chennai, “Bala Mandir comes closest to being a model adoption agency.”

Money involved in inter-country adoptions

There is no doubting that a great deal of money is to be made in ICA. While CARA stipulates that a maximum of Rs.100 a day for a maximum period of six months (Rs.18,000) can be paid by foreign adopters to the Indian agency, in reality agencies charge a hefty “India fee” that ranges from $3,000 to $5,000; the fees charged by big agencies start from $15,000. (The agencies’ foreign partners collect them on their behalf.) This `India fee’ is on top of costs such as agency fees, home study preparation, immigration fees, post-placement visits, assistance with paperwork, legal fees, and so on, and is openly stated in Internet advertisements.

A letter from the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister’s office to the Commissioner, Women Development and Child Welfare Department, in response to a representation made by St. Theresa’s Tender Loving Care Home, a voluntary agency, seeking withdrawal of the ban on such agencies placing children in adoption.

Foreign adopters carry substantial cash to India to pay the agency. Frances Abbott, in her book, My Gifts from India, records how she was fleeced at every stage even by lawyers and middlemen when she came to India from the U.S. to adopt a child.

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, which surveyed more than 1,600 American families that adopted internationally (including from India) through U.S. agencies, found that 75 per cent of them were asked by their agencies to carry at least $3,000 to their adoptive child’s country of origin to pay “adoption service fees.” Some 11 per cent of the respondents stated that when they were abroad, agencies asked them to pay additional fees or donations covertly; 15 per cent reported that their agency withheld information or gave them inaccurate information about the child; 15 per cent said their agency withheld information or gave them inaccurate information about the adoption process; and 14 per cent said their adoption cost exceeded what they were told at the start (testimony of Cindy Freidmutter, Executive Director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute on “International Adoptions: Problems and Solutions” before the House Committee on International Relations, May 22, 2002, which can be read at www.adoptioninstitute.org.

When asked about the high charges and donations, Preet Mandir (Pune) director J. Bhasin said: “The government stipulates Rs.24,000 for Indian and $700-900 for foreign adoptions. This is not adequate to run large institutions such as ours. We run only on grants and donations. If parents cannot afford it, we don’t ask them for donations, but if they can, they give as much as they want. We don’t demand it.”

CARA Chairperson Aloma Lobo finds this totally unacceptable: “Maintenance cost is like dowry. Agencies cannot run on donations. They should have a corpus of their own; otherwise they should not be in the business of service.” According to her, adoption should not be a money-making venture; it should be part of a larger child welfare programme. “This has to be regulated. I am trying to do something about it.”

Is adoption only for the rich?

In the existing set-up, no ordinary childless working class family can afford to adopt. According to the study “Adoption Agencies and Institutional Practices in Tamil Nadu: A Sociological Study” by Sujata Mody of the Chennai-based Malarchi Women’s Resource Centre, one adoption agency head in Tamil Nadu said: “It is the privilege of the elite.” Some agencies in Tamil Nadu admit that they need money to run the home, so they need to “charge suitably.” Even those agencies that charge only nominal legal, maintenance and registration fees do not consider skilled manual workers worthy “adopters.” There are, according to Vidya Reddy, a large number of people who are turned away on frivolous grounds.

In the wake of the December 26, 2004, tsunami, the issue of adoption has acquired another dimension with an outpouring of solidarity and generosity from India and abroad. This brings with it clear risks for the orphaned children and the relevant communities. It can open up a Pandora’s box. Adoption can be one of the options, provided the safety and welfare of the child can be absolutely guaranteed. There should certainly not be any dilution of the adoption rules. This is particularly important considering the trafficking of children under the guise of adoption. Evidence is pouring in from all tsunami-affected countries of child trafficking.

Some 60 child rights organisations have called for a year-long ban on adoption of children affected by the tsunami, as Gujarat did after the Bhuj earthquake. The options, the child rights activists say, for the orphaned children should be sensitive, kind, humane and, most important, child-centric, addressing the short- and long-term consequences as they have suffered enough. Realising the problems, the Tamil Nadu government has wisely decided not to entertain any adoption of the tsunami-affected children.

While several agencies do strictly child-centric placements, it is the malpractice of an influential section that brings adoption into disrepute. Why is CARA not taking action against the erring agencies? Says Aloma Lobo: “If CARA finds an agency flouting rules, it can only delicense that agency, not arrest the people involved.” According to her, CARA has the powers only to initiate investigation.

Adoption, as it is now practised, raises a set of questions: Who is responsible for the sham of ICAs? What is the role of CARA, the VCA and the State governments? Why is the Centre silent on this?

Unless the government intervenes, adoption – largely a social welfare measure – could be swayed by market forces and reduce growing numbers of children to commodities.

கிறிஸ்துவ அனாதை இல்ல பாலியல் கொடுமைகள்

மணிப்பூர், அசாம் சிறுவர்களை சொந்த ஊருக்கு அனுப்ப நடவடிக்கை

ஜனவரி 26,2010,00:00  IST

திருநெல்வேலி : கன்னியாகுமரி மாவட்டம் பலவிளையில் அனுமதியின்றி இயங்கிய குழந்தைகள் காப்பகத்தில் இருந்த மணிப்பூர், அசாம் மாநில குழந்தைகளை சொந்த ஊருக்கு அனுப்ப நடவடிக்கை மேற்கொள்ளப்பட்டுள்ளது. கேரளா காரகோணத்தைச் சேர்ந்தவர் ஷாஜி. கிறிஸ்தவ தொண்டு நிறுவனம் நடத்திவரும் இவர், கன்னியாகுமரி மாவட்டம் குழித்துறை அருகே, பலவிளையில் குழந்தைகளுக்கான காப்பகம் நடத்தி வந்தார்.
அங்கு, பெரும்பாலும் வெளிமாநில குழந்தைகள் தங்கவைக்கப்பட்டிருந்தனர். இதுகுறித்து தகவல் அறிந்த நெல்லை சிறுவர் கூர்நோக்கு இல்ல அதிகாரிகள் சோதனை நடத்தினர். சிறுவர் காப்பகம் நடத்த அரசிடம் அனுமதி பெறவில்லை. மேலும் 76 சிறுவர்களில் 22 பேர் அசாம், 54 பேர் மணிப்பூர் மாநிலத்தைச் சேர்ந்தவர்கள் என தெரிந்தது.
போலீஸ் உதவியுடன் அந்த சிறுவர்கள் நெல்லை அழைத்துவரப்பட்டனர். நெல்லை சரணாலயம் தொண்டு நிறுவனத்தில் தங்கவைக்கப்பட்டுள்ளனர். சிறுவர்கள் பெரும்பாலானோர், பெற்றோரை பிரிந்த ஏக்கத்தில் இருந்தனர். அவர்களை நெல்லை கலெக்டர் ஜெயராமன் நேற்று சந்தித்து பேசினார்.
அவர்களுக்கு உணவு, உடை, மருத்துவம் வழங்க உத்தரவிட்டார். மணிப்பூர், அசாம் மாநில அரசின் குழந்தைகள் நல அமைப்புடன் பேசி, அவர்களை அனுப்பிவைக்கும் வரை, கல்வி கற்பிக்க உள்ளதாக, சரணாலய இயக்குனர் ஜான்சன்அடிகள் கூறினார்.

குமரியில் அனுமதியின்றி இயங்கிய காப்பகத்துக்கு சீல் 76 சிறுவர்கள் மீட்பு

பதிவு செய்த நாள் 1/25/2010 12:36:34 AM

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நெல்லை: குமரி அருகே அனுமதியின்றி இயங்கிய காப்பகத்தில் இருந்து 76 சிறுவர்கள் மீட்கப்பட்டனர். காப்பகம் சீல் வைக்கப்பட்டது. இந்த சிறுவர்கள் நெல்லை சரணாலயத்தில் தங்க வைக்கப்பட்டுள்ளனர். கேரள மாநிலம் காரகோணம் பகுதியை சேர்ந்தவர் ஷாஜி. மதபோதகரான இவர் குமரி மாவட்டம்  பாலவிளை அருகே சொந்த கட்டிடத்தில் குழந்தைகள் காப்பகம் நடத்தி வந்தார். அங்கு 5 முதல் 13 வயதுக்கு உட்பட்ட 76 சிறுவர்கள் இருந்தனர். இங்கு வெளிமாநில சிறுவர்கள் அதிகம் பேர் இருப்பதை  அறிந்த அப்பகுதி மக்கள் போலீஸ் மற்றும் சமூக நலத்துறை அதிகாரிக்கு தகவல் தெரிவித்தனர்.

இதன் பேரில் நேற்று முன்தினம் இரவு தக்கலை டி.எஸ்.பி., சண்முகம், நெல்லை சிறுவர் கூர்நோக்கு இல்ல கண்காணிப்பாளர் மற்றும் சமூக நலத்துறை அதிகாரிகள் அங்கு சென்று விசாரணை நடத்தினர். இதில் அனுமதியின்றி காப்பகம் நடத்தி வருவதும் மற்றும் சிறுவர்கள் தங்க வைக்கப்பட்டிருப்பதும் தெரிய வந்தது. ஷாஜியிடம் நடந்த விசாரணையில், பசியால் வாடிய மிசோராம், மணிப்பூர், அசாம் மாநில குழந்தைகளை ஏஜென்ட்டுகள் மூலம் கொண்டு வந்ததாக கூறினார். இதையடுத்து காப்பகத்துக்கு சீல் வைத்து விட்டு அங்கிருந்த 76 சிறுவர்களையும் மீட்டு  நெல்லை ஜங்ஷனில் உள்ள சரணாலயத்திற்கு கொண்டு வந்தனர். அங்கு அவர்கள் தங்க வைக்கப்பட்டுள்ளனர்.

இதுகுறித்து தக்கலை டி.எஸ்.பி. சண்முகம் கூறுகையில், அனுமதியின்றி காப்பகம் நடத்தினால் அவர்கள் மீது சமூக நலத்துறைதான் நடவடிக்கை எடுக்கவேண்டும். அதே நேரம் காப்பகத்தில் உள்ள குழந்தைகள் கடத்தி வரப்பட்டு இருந்தாலோ, துன்புறுத்தப்படுவதாக புகார் வந்தாலோ காவல்துறை நடவடிக்கை எடுக்கும். ஷாஜி மீது இதுவரை எந்தப் புகாரும் இல்லை. எனினும் அவரை நாங்கள் தீவிரமாக கண்காணித்து வருகிறோம் என்றார்.
சமூகநலத்துறை அதிகாரி ஒருவர் கூறுகையில், ‘ஷாஜி நடத்திய காப்பகத்துக்கு அனுமதி கேட்டு விண்ணப்பித்துள்ளார். ஆனால் இதுவரை அனுமதி கொடுக்கப் படவில்லை.

எனவே தற்போது காப்பகத்துக்கு சீல் மட்டுமே வைத்துள்ளோம். மேல் நடவடிக்கை குறித்து ஆலோசித்து வருகிறோம்’ என்றார்.
இதற்கிடையில், சரணாலயத்தில் தங்க வைக்கப்பட்டுள்ள 76 வெளி மாநில சிறுவர்கள் தொடர்பாக நெல்லை ஜங்ஷன் சரணலாயத்தில் குழந்தைகள் நல குழு உறுப்பினர்களின் ஆலோசனை கூட்டம் நேற்று நடந்தது. இதில், அரசு அதிகாரிகள் மற்றும் செஞ்சிலுவை சங்கம் மூலம் சம்பந்தப்பட்ட மாநிலங்களில் விசாரணை நடத்தி இந்த சிறுவர்களை பெற்றோர்களிடம் ஒப்படைக்க முடிவு செய்யப்பட்டது.Child traffickers from North-East set up base in Tamil Nadu

Arun Ram, TNN, 26 January 2010, 03:58am IST

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Child-traffickers-from-North-East-set-up-base-in-Tamil-Nadu/articleshow/5500852.cms

CHENNAI: Hundreds of children from the northeastern states are being trafficked by well-networked groups, who have found a safe haven in Tamil

Nadu. The rescue of 76 malnourished children, from Manipur and Assam, from a home at Kuzhithurai in Kanyakumari district this week is only the tip of a vast network, which receives crores of rupees from churches and agencies abroad by showing a large number of children under their “care”

Children from Manipur, especially those belonging to the Kuki tribe, are targeted by traffickers masquerading as evangelists and missionaries as people in the insurgency-hit areas are willing to send off their children if they are promised a good education. While 1,096 children’s homes, housing 3.5 lakh children, are registered in the state, almost an equal number operate without registration, evading government scrutiny.

The children aged six to 15 are kept in pathetic conditions and are often made to do jobs like carpentry, cooking and laundry. There have even been cases of children dying under suspicious circumstances and some being molested and abused. “Hundreds of children are brought from the northeastern states to Tamil Nadu, where they are virtually apportioned among what pass off as children’s homes. A large number of these homes are not registered with any government department. We have our hands full,” says P Manorama, chairperson, Child Welfare Committee, Chennai.

Incidentally, a majority of homes charged with trafficking are run by missionaries or evangelical societies. “These institutions exploit religion to make money. With many of them not registered with the government, the homes escape scrutiny,” says Vidya Reddy of Tulir, Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse.

In 2005, Richard (11), a Manipuri inmate of ‘New Life Centre’ in Tirunelveli, died, reportedly of drowning. The following year, another boy, Pilgrim Nicobar (7), was found dead in a pond in the same home. The home’s licence was cancelled, but the investigations into the deaths yielded virtually nothing. In 2005, three girls of a children’s home in Chennai, including two from Manipur, complained that they had been molested. Police questioned the director, but there has been no follow-up.//

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1809/18090460.htm

75 northeast children rescued from children’s homes
25 Jan 2010, 25-2 HrsChennai, Jan 25 The Tamil Nadu police have rescued 75 children hailing from Manipur and Assam from two homes run by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Chennai and Kanyakumari.

Chennai, Jan 25 (IANS) The Tamil Nadu police have rescued 75 children hailing from Manipur and Assam from two homes run by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Chennai and Kanyakumari.

On Sunday, the Kanyakumari police rescued 56 boys (22 from Assam and 34 from Manipur) from Bedesta Blessing Home near Kuzhithurai.

The Chennai police Saturday rescued 19 Manipuri children from a home here. The children were abused and malnourished.

The city police have arrested three agents from Manipur and are on the lookout for Immanuel who ran the Reach Children Home.

Both the homes were not registered under the Juvenile Justice Act and the police acted on the complaint of locals on seeing the kids being ill treated.

According to Kanyakumari police, the 56 boys were part of 150 children (boys and girls) who were brought from Manipur and Assam by a priest called Paul.

Initially, the children were put in a home in Red Hills near here. As Paul was not able to raise money to maintain the children, he had sent boys to Kanyakumari and the girls to a home in Bangalore.

According to Father Joseph Johnson, member of Child Welfare Committee in Tirunelvelli district, there are two more unresgistered homes in Tirunelvelli housing several children from Manipur.

Meanwhile, the department of social defense has formed a team to trace out unregistered homes in the state.//

A business in babies

Adoption agencies thrive on “human trade” as the practice of selling female babies continues among the Lambadas on the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border.

RAVI SHARMA
in Konchavaram, Tandur & Hyderabad

“WHY do you want to take only my new-born daughter? Take all four of my daughters.” Shivram Yadav was not being sarcastic. Nor was there any trace of remorse in his voice. Coming from a man who earns Rs.20 a day as and when he finds work as a daily wage earner, it was the expression of a bitter reality he and other members of the Lambada community had been coping with for long. The 35-year-old unlettered man from Wantichinta tanda (hamlet), 140 km from Hyderabad, sold his fifth child, a girl, a year ago for Rs.600. “What can I do? Gooribai (a Lambada woman from a nearby tanda) came and said ‘you are poor, you can’t look after your daughter. I will look after her and send her to school’. So I gave the child,” Shivram Yadav said. Kamalabai, his wife, said that she was unable to eat for 15 days after giving away her child.

A large number of Lambadas live in tandas that dot the Konchavaram reserved forests on either side of the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border. They are steeped in poverty and the practice of abandoning or giving up their female babies is common among them. They do it now increasingly, for a price. Middlemen often posing as social workers or well-wishers “buy” the babies and hand them over to adoption centres. The tandas are mostly located in arid, inhospitable areas like Gulbarga district in northern Karnataka and Ranga Reddy district in Andhra Pradesh. Each tanda has a population of between 1,000 and 2,000, the majority being Lambadas. There are around 100 tandas in the Konchavaram forest area. The Lambadas, who speak Gorboli, a mixture of Hindi, Rajasthani and Gujarati, originally migrated to the Konchavaram forests from Rajasthan.

RAVI SHARMA
Changibai of Wantichinta tanda with her two remaining daughters.

The literacy rate among the Lambadas is lower than 20 per cent. Girls, if they go to school, do not study beyond Class V. Maruti Chauhan, a Lambada and a teacher at the Government Higher Primary School in Dharmasagar tanda, said the children do not attend school regularly. “They are used by the families to work in the fields.”

Agricultural work being seasonal, the rate of unemployment is high among the Lambadas. Their traditional occupations of collecting minor forest produce and cattle grazing have been curtailed in recent years after Konchavaram was declared a reserved forest. One of their long-standing demands is that they be given contracts to collect forest produce and sell them through societies run by them. They allege that persons from Andhra Pradesh have been cornering the contracts.

Health care facilities are woefully inadequate in the tandas. The primary health centres are understaffed and ill-equipped. Schemes such as the Karnataka Border Area Development Programme have not benefited them much.

Shocking instances of trade in female babies came to light following the arrest of Christopher Vinod of Hyderabad by the Andhra Pradesh Police on March 22. He was travelling by car to Hyderabad with three female babies. On being questioned, he was not able to tell the police about either the antecedents or destination of the babies. According to the police, he confessed later that he was taking them to the St. Teresa’s Tender Loving Care Home (TLCH), a recognised adoption centre in Hyderabad. But Sister Teresa Maria, the chief coordinator of the TLCH, denied having met Vinod ever. She, however, said that Vinod could have brought the babies to the TLCH after an adoption centre at Tandur, 110 km from Hyderabad, refused to accept them, citing the poor state of their health. “He couldn’t take them back to the parents, so he could have brought them to us,” she said.

An accomplice of Vinod, Parvathibai, a Lambada from Zilvarsha tanda, was also arrested. Both claimed that the babies had been handed over to them by their parents.

A visit to the tandas shows that it does not take much to convince Lambadas to hand over newborn female children to such middlemen. The majority of them being unlettered, impoverished and burdened with huge families, Lambadas consider female children to be dispensable. The traditional belief that only male children can be sent to work and the fact that a relatively large sum of money (between Rs.40,000 to Rs.60,000) has to be paid as dowry have also contributed to the practice of selling female children. The women wait for the birth of at least one male child before undergoing sterilisation. (Curiously, several Lambada women told this correspondent that they had children even after undergoing tubectomy.) Most of the women complained that their husbands would get drunk and beat them for not giving birth to a male child.

Said Poonibai, 28, from Chindanur tanda, who gave away her female child just four days after birth in February: “When my fifth daughter was born, my husband was away in Mumbai working as a daily wage earner. I had no money. What can I do with another daughter? Who will pay the dowry? Parvathibai said she will look after the baby and send her to school; she even promised me that she would send my daughter to see me when she grows up. So I gave the baby away and took Rs.500.”

Changibai, 25, of Wantichinta tanda lost her husband Limbaji last year, and her second husband deserted her a few months ago after she gave birth to a female child. She said: “I already had two daughters and what can I do with one more? So I gave away my baby to Gooribai who paid me Rs.500. She said that she would send her to school and later give her for adoption.”

RAVI SHARMA
At the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home at Tandur, Andhra Pradesh.

Similar were the stories of Baiamma, Sakabai and Gopibai of Dharmasagar tanda. They said that Parvathibai and Christopher Vinod had visited their tanda many times and promised to take their babies to the Konchavaram residential school or to give them for adoption to a “good home”.

As two of the babies that were with Vinod at the time of his arrest were from tandas located on the Karnataka side of the border, the Karnataka Police, along with their Andhra Pradesh counterparts, have been investigating the matter. The Karnataka Police claimed that they had identified 19 babies who were taken from tandas in Karnataka to adoption homes in Andhra Pradesh. But when the police took the babies to their mothers they refused to take them back.

THE roles played by middlemen and adoption centres have come into focus. Middlemen, after paying money to the parents, take the babies to adoption centres in Andhra Pradesh. According to them, the babies are mainly meant for inter-country adoption. It is not clear whether the adoption centres follow the guidelines set by the Supreme Court in 1984 and also the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), a regulatory body under the Union Ministry of Social Justice. Shanta Reddy, member of the National Commission for Women who visited five recognised inter-country adoption centres, said: “I suspect that some mischief is going on in some of these adoption centres. In many cases there is no record to show where some of the babies are sent.”

According to Alok Kumar, Superintendent of Police, Gulbarga, Gooribai and Parvathibai stated that they supplied babies regularly to, among others, Vinod and the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home, a recognised adoption centre at Tandur in Andhra Pradesh. But with corroborative evidence hard to come by and in the absence of specific provisions in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to deal with the problem of people securing babies for adoption, it would be difficult to take action against Vinod, Gooribai and Parvathibai. The police have booked cases against them under Section 373 of the IPC. This provision pertains to the buying and selling of a minor child for the purpose of prostitution. But it would be difficult to prove that prostitution was the motive behind their securing babies.

The lack of legal provisions to punish the culprits in such instances has hampered the work of the police. The fate of an inquiry launched by the Criminal Investigation Department of the Andhra Pradesh Police in 1999 into similar cases is not known. Two institutions – the Good Samaritan Evangelical and Welfare Association and the Action for Social Development – were raided and their licences to facilitate inter-country adoptions was suspended (Frontline, May 7, 1999).

Based on the confessions of Gooribai and Parvathibai, the Karnataka Police visited the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home on April 6 to arrest its co-founder, Savitridevi Samson. But she gave the police the slip by telling them that she was going to offer prayers. She is said to have escaped to Hyderabad. The police suspect that Savitridevi, a United States green card holder, might have fled to the U.S. The police could also not arrest Savitridevi’s former husband, Robert Mahendran, co-founder of the Home. According to the police, Mahendran fell out with Savitridevi and, along with Vinod (who previously worked for the Home) and one Peter Subbiah, started a Hyderabad-based network to secure babies from the tandas. The ’success’ of this group is said to have prompted its rivals to inform the police about Vinod’s car ride on March 22.

The Karnataka Police, which arrested Sudarshan and Varaprasad, the legal adviser and the caretaker of the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home respectively, claimed that it has evidence of fabrication and falsification of documents relating to the antecedents of the child, its relinquishment and its adoption at the Home. Said Alok Kumar, who visited both the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home and the TLCH, “There is serious violation of Supreme Court guidelines and there are many procedural lapses. For example, the biological parents who relinquish the child have to be counselled against it. But many a time the real parents are nowhere in the picture. ‘Parents’ arranged for the purpose affix their signatures.”

Many adoption centres have also had their recognition renewed despite their having violated the Supreme Court guidelines.

According to Shanta Reddy, as per the records 18 babies died at the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home in the last four months of 2000. But there were no authentic death certificates. Pointing out that there were discrepancies between the records maintained by the Home and the Secretary of the Voluntary Coordinating Agency (VCA) (part of the regulatory system that was established following the Supreme Court order), Shanta Reddy accused the VCA of having given permission for adoption in one case even after the death of the child. She also pointed out: “The number of inter-country adoptions claimed to have been done by the St.Theresa’s Tender Loving Care Home is a lot higher than the list produced by the VCA.”

Shanta Reddy expressed surprise over the fact that many babies received from the tandas had been sent for inter-country adoption. “The adoption centres say that since the skin of the baby is dark, Indian couples won’t take them, but babies from both the TLCH and the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home are fair-skinned. It is obvious that inter-country adoption brings in the funds, subsidising in many institutions the hospitalisation costs of all the babies and the procedures for Indian adoptions. Each baby sent for inter-country adoption brings the centre, by their own admission, at least $3,000. Besides this they are given liberal donations.”

Prem Kumar, secretary of the VCA, claimed that during his last visit to the John Abraham Memorial Bethany Home, in February, things looked all right. On the allegation that he had permitted the adoption of a baby girl who had died, Prem Kumar said that the details of the case were made known to him only in February 2001, several months after the incident took place. He stressed that the file on each baby was maintained meticulously and periodic reports from foreign nationals were received regularly. Admitting that there were “small problems,” he said that the “VCA did not have much power to stem wrongdoing”.

However, Frontline learnt that each inter-country adoption fetches the agency around $7,000 and the money is received abroad. (CARA has approved the collection of Rs.150 a day from the adopting parents from the day the baby enters the centre until the time it is adopted.)

Centres like the TLCH maintain that they will have to take into account the money spent on looking after the babies, most of them sick and malnourished, from the time of their arrival. Said Sister Maria: “VCA clearance takes nearly a year; plus there are costs like visa fees, which add up to Rs.15,000. And anyway all the healthy babies go to Indian couples; it is only the older, sickly or deformed babies that go abroad.”

Admitting that the rules are bent at times, Sister Maria said that this was done only on humanitarian grounds. “If I stick to the rules and turn away a sick baby it may die or it could even be killed.” Recollecting a recent visit to a Lambada house in Devarakonde, near Hyderabad, Sister Maria said that she saw newly born twin girls being eaten by ants. When she wanted to take the babies to the TLCH, the family members asked for a gold chain. “They said ‘people come here and give money, why don’t you also do so?’ We refused and went back. A week later I got a call from the same family, telling us that the babies were in a bad condition and that we could take them. I asked themhem to hire a taxi and come. The babies were nursed back and were adopted by a Jewish Italian man. At most we pay the taxi charges in such cases.”//

THE ADOPTION MARKET- ASHA KRISHNAKUMAR

A Frontline investigation lays bare a multi-billion-dollar, countrywide racket in inter-country adoption of children, run by private adoption agencies that exploit the loopholes in the rules.

http://www.thehindu.com/fline/fl2211/stories/20050603006700400.htm

P. GOUTHAM

A new-born female child, which was sold by her mother in Salem, in the arms of her sisters after she was restored to the family by the district administration in 2002.

THE arrest in Chennai on May 3, 2005, of five kidnappers, who have sold over 350 children to an adoption agency in the city over many years; the inquiry ordered by the Delhi government into the process of inter-country adoptions in 10 agencies in the Capital; and the recent moves in Andhra Pradesh to book Shalini Misra, a former Director of the Women Development and Child Welfare Department, who had cracked the adoption racket in the State in 1999, under the SC/ST Atrocities Prevention Act, have blown the lid off a massive adoption racket in the country. Trade in inter-country adoptions, in particular, appears to be a “roaring business” for some unscrupulous agencies.

In 1999, the country was shocked by the revelation of an inter-country adoption racket in Andhra Pradesh when S. Peter Subbiah of Good Samaritan Evangelical Social Welfare Association was found buying and selling babies. Around the same time, similar stories emerged from Tamil Nadu’s Salem district, from where the police arrested five persons on complaints of stealing four babies from the government hospital. The babies were found in an adoption agency in Chennai. The commodification of children should have ended with such revelations. But it has not.

Frontline investigation and the documents obtained in the process show that such revelations are only the tip of the iceberg. With some exceptions, inter-country adoption is a can of worms. Some unscrupulous agencies have made India an international baby shopping centre.

Papers are forged and guidelines violated as babies are matched rapidly with foreign parents. Touts of private adoption agencies hunt for vulnerable families. Often, the mother has little negotiating power. For as little as Rs.150-500, a new-born is handed over to touts who are paid about Rs.6,000 a baby by the agencies. Mothers who go to reclaim their babies are turned away. Some agencies look the other way from the trafficking, stealing, and buying of babies.

Children are sold abroad by providing false information about them, falsifying documents, and making use of loopholes in the adoption guidelines prescribed by the Supreme Court. Some agencies also make bargain offers to adoptive parents for the wholesale purchase of babies; while some others seem to blackmail those who refuse to increase the purchase price of babies. Western placement agencies collect payment far in excess of the actual adoption costs, routing a portion of this to the Indian adoption agency.

While only an estimated 15-20 per cent of adoption agencies seem to indulge in the racket, the gravity of the situation must not be underestimated. There is an urgent need to restructure and reform the system of adoption in India.

Inter-country adoption (ICA), which began primarily as an ad hoc humanitarian response to children orphaned by the Second World War, who could not find a family to care for them in their own country, is now a complex social phenomena that has lent itself to serious abuse. It is substantially commercialised. Several intermediaries have turned it into a profitable business indulging in fraud and illegal and unethical practices. In such cases, the total disregard for the children being adopted turns them to mere commodities.

P. GOUTHAM

A baby at the Tamil Nadu government’s cradle baby centre in Salem.

Globally, over the past three decades, 2,65,677 babies, most of them from 10 countries – China, Russia, India, Ukraine, Vietnam, Romania, S. Korea, Cambodia, Gautemala and Kazakhstan – have been placed in ICA. These adoptions have risen from about 9,000 in 1992 to over 20,000 in 2002. Among the sending countries, India holds a prominent position. The United States ranks first among the receiving nations, accounting for over half of all ICAs worldwide. ICAs from developing countries happen primarily with the demand for children increasing in developed countries and the supply rising commensurately from the developing countries.

The demand for children increases in developed countries owing to fertility declines, the greater availability of contraceptive aids, the legalisation of abortion, higher participation of women in the workforce, the rise in the age of marriage, the postponement of childbirth and state support for single mothers. The supply rises in the developing countries owing to an increasing number of orphaned and abandoned children because of poor and worsening socio-economic conditions. According to Hyderabad-based Gita Ramaswamy, who has done extensive research on adoptions in India, the process now represents in many ways the convergence of demand and supply. “To cut the going global rate of $22,000-$25,000 per child, international adopters come to India to shop for babies, available at a fourth of this price,” she says.

As many as 255 foreign adoption agencies (of which 131 are government bodies) and 74 Indian placement agencies are recognised by the Government of India for ICA. There is no legislation that covers inter-country adoption. There are only rules laid down by the Supreme Court in a series of judgments, most notably the 1984 case of Laxmikant Pandey v. Union of India. The Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), set up by the government in the wake of this judgment, implements and monitors ICA; it is also the nodal agency in respect of adoption in India. According to the Supreme Court judgment, CARA is expected to act as a “clearing house of information” related to children available for ICA.

Voluntary Coordinating Agencies (VCAs) in the States are supposed to ensure that children are first offered for Indian adoption (in line with the Supreme Court guidelines) and if this fails to happen within a stipulated timeframe, clear the children to CARA for inter-country adoption. No agency in India can proceed with ICA without a `no objection certificate’ from CARA. There are several checks and balances to ensure that inter-country adoptions are done in the best interest of the child.

However, in addition to the loopholes in the CARA rules that are exploited with impunity, there is a nexus among agencies, middlemen, and the authorities that makes a mockery of the rules. While adoption has certainly benefited thousands of Indian children and parents, and is done with a lot of care and passion by some agencies, many institutions violate the child’s most basic rights in the pursuit of money.

A series of scandals uncovered in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu over the past few years is finally laying bare the inter-country adoption network throughout the country.

“Inter-country Adoption”, an international study by the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) research institute, International Child Development Centre in Florence, Italy, is one of the most extensive pieces of research on the subject. It brings into the open the “large-scale abuses of the spirit and procedures of inter-country adoptions.” According to the study: “During the adoption process, violations of the most basic rights of the child can occur. These violations are often perpetrated under the cover of the supposedly humanitarian aim of the act and `justified’ by the simplistic view that the child will somehow always be `better off’ in a rich country. Illegal acts and malpractice involve criminal networks, intermediaries of all kinds, and couples prepared to carry out, to be accomplice to, tolerate, or simply ignore abuses in order to secure an adoption. The diversity of the methods used and the range of actors demonstrate the complexity of the task of protecting the rights of the child in inter-country adoption. The challenge is greater in that in many, if not most, cases the resulting adoption bears all the hallmarks of a perfectly legal procedure.”

The UNICEF report points to a number of ways in which inter-country adoption is abused using illegal, unethical, and clandestine methods. Frontline investigation shows that all these methods are practised by some agencies in India doing flourishing business in ICAs:

Obtaining children illegally

P.V. SIVAKUMAR

A February 2002 picture showing Andhra Pradesh Minister for Women and Child Welfare S. Saraswati (left) and Director of the Women Development and Child Welfare Department Shalini Misra (right) performing `Annaparasana’ for babies rescued from an adoption centre in Hyderabad.

*Abducting babies by a variety of methods, including organised kidnapping as is clear from the Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh experience.

*Identifying vulnerable mothers – from poor families, unwed or single – and enticing them to give up their babies. The pressure may be exerted before the birth, at the maternity clinic or hospital, or in the adoption agency, which may house the mother till delivery. Such pressure is also reinforced by free pre- and post-natal care. For example, a children’s home in a Chennai suburb runs a short-stay home for deserted, destitute and abandoned women. It takes particular interest in rehabilitating unwed mothers who give away their children in adoption.

*Falsely informing the mother that her baby was stillborn or died shortly after birth so as to spirit away the infant. For example, agencies operate from within the hospital premises in New Delhi, according to the findings of an inquiry conducted by the Delhi government of 10 agencies.

*Buying children from poor families, for example, from the Lambada tribes in Andhra Pradesh.

*Accepting financial or material rewards for the adoption agency in exchange for children. This seems a common practice among some agencies, as is clear from the letters sent to Indian officials by foreign adopters. In fact, an adoption agency in Chennai admits that the money got from foreign adoptions pays for the maintenance of the institution, and also the orphanage/school it runs.

*Offering women financial incentives to conceive a child specifically for adoption abroad and luring poor women to sell their babies.

Such instances were reported among the Lambada tribe of Andhra Pradesh. Says Shalini Misra, former director, in the Andhra Pradesh Women Development and Child Welfare Department, who shut down many agencies that prepared children for overseas adoptions in Hyderabad after a scandal broke out in 2001: “I saw a chain of agents luring the Lambada tribal women when they were pregnant.” The agents said: “If it’s a male child, you keep it, no problem; but if it’s a girl, you won’t be able to keep her because of your poverty, so give her to us and we will take care of her and give you money.” Middlemen routinely lied. Mothers were told that they could visit regularly, that their children would be given an education and a chance to move up in society. But actually, the children were to be sent overseas. “This practice was widespread, allowing Hyderabad adoption agencies to amass substantial illicit funds,” she said. According to Shalini Misra, American parents paid Rs.500,000 to Rs.2.5 million to adopt a child purchased from tribal families for a meagre amount.

*Providing misleading information to the biological parent(s) on the consequences of adoption to obtain their consent. This includes assuring them, or allowing them to believe, that they will be able to maintain links with, or receive news of, the child after adoption.

*Providing false information to prospective adopters. The U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs, for instance, cautions that one of the most common adoption frauds involves intermediaries who offer a supposedly healthy child for adoption knowing that the child is seriously ill. This is revealed by letters from parents who had adopted from some agencies in India.

Illegally securing permission to adopt

*Falsifying, or falsely obtaining “free for adoption” certificate from the appropriate authorities using loopholes in the rules. According to former CARA Chairperson and honorary general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Indian Council for Child Welfare Andal Damodaran, routine checks at an adoption agency in Coimbatore revealed that it was using loopholes such as falsely matching siblings in order to send children abroad.

*The “child relinquishing letters” supposed to be given by the biological parents or guardians seem to have been signed by the same person, faked, or not signed at all. Yet the magistrates authorised to certify the letter seem to have counter-signed the certificate. This was found in some agencies in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

*Collusion of officials to help agencies with inter-country adoptions.

For example, a Coimbatore adoption agency was hurriedly issued a licence in 2003 without following the mandated procedure of it being registered with the Department of Social Welfare for a minimum of three years. The inspection report of CARA, after the agency’s licence expired last year, revealed enormous deficiencies in the operations of the institution.

The agency, at the time of CARA inspection on October 6, 2002, had a 13-day-old baby with no records. The authorities also observed that the institution had not made enough effort to identify the Indian parents. However, the institution was given an inter-country adoption licence on June 19, 2003; an application was even made to CARA for recognising the agency to operate as the second VCA in Tamil Nadu, supported by officials in the Department of Social Welfare.

This apart, despite the July 2, 2004 CARA inspection report that says that the agency has indulged in “unethical practices” and its “registration is not proper,” its ICA licence was renewed last month. The report also points to most children from the agency being sent to one Washington-based agency, International Families Incorporated, whose executive director is Mrudula Rao, mother of the treasurer of the Indian agency. E. Ramana Rao, the treasurer’s father, has donated “most of the funds to the agency,” which is an “unethical practice,” the report observes.

Circumventing the adoption process

*In some cases, relatives or `fake’ mothers signed away a child they were temporarily caring for, pretending to be the biological parents.

*In some cases, the biological mother and the adoptive parents actively collude: The former registers in hospital in the adoptive mother’s name or assigns paternity to the prospective adoptive father. In such a case the official act of adoption is eliminated altogether.

In several places, the government’s `children homes’ are run by adoption agencies. For instance, the children’s home in Sambajinagar (Maharashtra) is run by a Pune-based adoption agency. In early 2004, when a team of health workers from the Municipal Corporation went there for a surprise check, it was not allowed entry. However, after government intervention, when it finally managed to get in, the team found children to be in poor health; many of them were malnourished and polio-affected (10 out of 66; Daily Samana, January 5, 2004). This raises an important question: Why is the government letting adoption agencies run children’s homes?

According to researcher Gita Ramaswamy, “a multi-billion dollar international adoption industry is getting exposed.” According to her, for many agencies inter-country adoption is the bread and butter. They adopt various means to circumvent the rules, aided by some unscrupulous officials.

Using loopholes in CARA guidelines

CARA guidelines insist that “at least half of all adoptions done by any agency that is recognised for ICA should be in-country,” and that “only after the VCA is unable to place the baby in the country within 30 days and clears the baby for inter-country adoption can the agencies place the baby in adoption outside the country after obtaining an NoC from CARA.” But significantly, the guideline exempts from this procedure siblings, special-needs children, and children over six. This is the loophole most abused. However, many Indian adopters now are also asking for siblings and special-needs children.

There have been instances of agencies bringing together unrelated children and declaring them siblings. This helps agencies not only get past the VCA but also earn double for placing two children in adoption. They also get around the “at least 50 per cent in-country adoption” rule.

Most times, the period of 60 days stipulated earlier (it is now reduced to 30) is not sufficient for the VCA to locate an Indian adopter and, almost by default, the child is given clearance for inter-country adoption. Agencies also manage to force the VCA into situations where it has no choice but to clear normal babies for inter-country adoption. According to former Tamil Nadu VCA member Vidya Reddy, agencies plan and co-ordinate their application for clearance at the same time so that the VCA is inundated with proposals. With inadequate time and staff, the VCA finds it difficult to locate Indian adopters within the stipulated time.

According to Andal Damodaran in “Adoption in India – Past, Present and Future,” a paper presented at an International Conference on Adoption in Adelaide, April 2004, although the guidelines of the Supreme Court and CARA provide a number of safeguards, “we are constantly faced with deviations, which flout various ethical principles including the adoptability of the child, costs and short-cutting of procedures.”

Follow-up reports of children placed in adoption for the mandated period after adoption are rarely done. According to Gita Ramaswamy, while in some cases there is close mandated scrutiny by courts, by and large they have become a mere `rubber-stamping’ institution.

Says Andal Damodaran in her conference paper: “Often, there seems to be lacunae in the preparation of the child and prospective adoptive parents. The history of the child is not fully recorded. In many cases the prospective adoptive parents are not counselled adequately on the likely difficulties they may encounter.” She adds: “Market tactics are often used to deal with adoption. The `supply’ rises to meet `demand’, there is `highest bidding’, `retainer fees’, `expected annual turnover’ and so on contrary to the child-centric objective of adoption.”

According to Vidya Reddy, agencies invariably view the procedures for getting “abandoned” certificate (as opposed to “surrender” documents) as cumbersome paperwork. Most times, the documents are forged or gone through in haste. Gita Ramaswamy agrees, pointing out that in Andhra Pradesh government officials and their apparatus were aiding these agencies; instead of questioning infringements of procedures, they turn a blind eye or collude in the questionable practices in some cases. She says that institutions such as the VCA and CARA, in a way, failed to perform their duties. Activists also accuse CARA of giving clearances mechanically, despite having access to all the documents.

Ironically, in Andhra Pradesh, a charge-sheet has been filed against a former VCA Secretary for alleged involvement in the adoption racket. And the Indian Council of Social Welfare, which was also found guilty of a number of adoption malpractices by the State government, which investigated the adoption racket in 2000, was one of the scrutinising agencies for ICA. The scrutinising agency examines the application for guardianship made on behalf of the foreign parents; now Indian parents are also scrutinised.

Activists such as Gita Ramaswamy demand a thorough revamp of the complex adoption process to make it transparent and child-centric. She regrets that even the legal system has failed to pull up the offending placement agencies. The court-appointed scrutinising agency overlooked obvious breach of procedural regulations, while family courts passed orders without scrutinising the documents. She says: “In the entire system there was no one actually speaking for the child. Most are focussed on getting the child out of the country in the quickest possible time. Many foreign adopters have mentioned this (the quickness of the process) as their reason for choosing India to adopt a child.”

According to Andal Damodaran, there are the honourable exceptions throughout the country. One is the Chennai-based Bala Mandir that has been working as a juvenile home and orphanage from the 1950s. The majority of children here are not free for adoption. According to a social worker, most children in Bala Mandir have one parent, a grandparent, aunt, or some relative, with whom the child has a bond. Only in rare cases of abandonment and even rarer cases of surrender do children become available for adoption here. In fact, according to Sujata Mody, who has done extensive research on adoption in Chennai, “Bala Mandir comes closest to being a model adoption agency.”

Money involved in inter-country adoptions

There is no doubting that a great deal of money is to be made in ICA. While CARA stipulates that a maximum of Rs.100 a day for a maximum period of six months (Rs.18,000) can be paid by foreign adopters to the Indian agency, in reality agencies charge a hefty “India fee” that ranges from $3,000 to $5,000; the fees charged by big agencies start from $15,000. (The agencies’ foreign partners collect them on their behalf.) This `India fee’ is on top of costs such as agency fees, home study preparation, immigration fees, post-placement visits, assistance with paperwork, legal fees, and so on, and is openly stated in Internet advertisements.

A letter from the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister’s office to the Commissioner, Women Development and Child Welfare Department, in response to a representation made by St. Theresa’s Tender Loving Care Home, a voluntary agency, seeking withdrawal of the ban on such agencies placing children in adoption.

Foreign adopters carry substantial cash to India to pay the agency. Frances Abbott, in her book, My Gifts from India, records how she was fleeced at every stage even by lawyers and middlemen when she came to India from the U.S. to adopt a child.

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, which surveyed more than 1,600 American families that adopted internationally (including from India) through U.S. agencies, found that 75 per cent of them were asked by their agencies to carry at least $3,000 to their adoptive child’s country of origin to pay “adoption service fees.” Some 11 per cent of the respondents stated that when they were abroad, agencies asked them to pay additional fees or donations covertly; 15 per cent reported that their agency withheld information or gave them inaccurate information about the child; 15 per cent said their agency withheld information or gave them inaccurate information about the adoption process; and 14 per cent said their adoption cost exceeded what they were told at the start (testimony of Cindy Freidmutter, Executive Director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute on “International Adoptions: Problems and Solutions” before the House Committee on International Relations, May 22, 2002, which can be read at www.adoptioninstitute.org.

When asked about the high charges and donations, Preet Mandir (Pune) director J. Bhasin said: “The government stipulates Rs.24,000 for Indian and $700-900 for foreign adoptions. This is not adequate to run large institutions such as ours. We run only on grants and donations. If parents cannot afford it, we don’t ask them for donations, but if they can, they give as much as they want. We don’t demand it.”

CARA Chairperson Aloma Lobo finds this totally unacceptable: “Maintenance cost is like dowry. Agencies cannot run on donations. They should have a corpus of their own; otherwise they should not be in the business of service.” According to her, adoption should not be a money-making venture; it should be part of a larger child welfare programme. “This has to be regulated. I am trying to do something about it.”

Is adoption only for the rich?

In the existing set-up, no ordinary childless working class family can afford to adopt. According to the study “Adoption Agencies and Institutional Practices in Tamil Nadu: A Sociological Study” by Sujata Mody of the Chennai-based Malarchi Women’s Resource Centre, one adoption agency head in Tamil Nadu said: “It is the privilege of the elite.” Some agencies in Tamil Nadu admit that they need money to run the home, so they need to “charge suitably.” Even those agencies that charge only nominal legal, maintenance and registration fees do not consider skilled manual workers worthy “adopters.” There are, according to Vidya Reddy, a large number of people who are turned away on frivolous grounds.

In the wake of the December 26, 2004, tsunami, the issue of adoption has acquired another dimension with an outpouring of solidarity and generosity from India and abroad. This brings with it clear risks for the orphaned children and the relevant communities. It can open up a Pandora’s box. Adoption can be one of the options, provided the safety and welfare of the child can be absolutely guaranteed. There should certainly not be any dilution of the adoption rules. This is particularly important considering the trafficking of children under the guise of adoption. Evidence is pouring in from all tsunami-affected countries of child trafficking.

Some 60 child rights organisations have called for a year-long ban on adoption of children affected by the tsunami, as Gujarat did after the Bhuj earthquake. The options, the child rights activists say, for the orphaned children should be sensitive, kind, humane and, most important, child-centric, addressing the short- and long-term consequences as they have suffered enough. Realising the problems, the Tamil Nadu government has wisely decided not to entertain any adoption of the tsunami-affected children.

While several agencies do strictly child-centric placements, it is the malpractice of an influential section that brings adoption into disrepute. Why is CARA not taking action against the erring agencies? Says Aloma Lobo: “If CARA finds an agency flouting rules, it can only delicense that agency, not arrest the people involved.” According to her, CARA has the powers only to initiate investigation.

Adoption, as it is now practised, raises a set of questions: Who is responsible for the sham of ICAs? What is the role of CARA, the VCA and the State governments? Why is the Centre silent on this?

Unless the government intervenes, adoption – largely a social welfare measure – could be swayed by market forces and reduce growing numbers of children to commodities.

பாதிரிகள் செக்ஸ் அக்கிரமம் மறைத்தவர் போப்பரசர்

Pope ‘led cover-up of child abuse by priests

Top: Tom Doyle and, bottom, Pope Benedict

This Is London | Sep 30, 2006

The Pope played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by the BBC tonight.

In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church’s interests ahead of child safety.

The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.

The Panorama special, Sex Crimes And The Vatican, investigates the details of this little-known document for the first time. The programme also accuses the Catholic Church of knowingly harbouring paedophile clergymen. It reveals that priests accused of child abuse are generally not struck off or arrested but simply moved to another parish, often to reoffend. It gives examples of hush funds being used to silence the victims.

Before being elected as Pope Benedict XVI in April last year, the pontiff was Cardinal Thomas Ratzinger who had, for 24 years, been the head of the powerful Congregation of the Doctrine of The Faith, the department of the Roman Catholic Church charged with promoting Catholic teachings on morals and matters of faith. An arch-Conservative, he was regarded as the ‘enforcer’ of Pope John Paul II in cracking down on liberal challenges to traditional Catholic teachings.

Five years ago he sent out an updated version of the notorious 1962 Vatican document Crimen Sollicitationis – Latin for The Crime of Solicitation – which laid down the Vatican’s strict instructions on covering up sexual scandal. It was regarded as so secret that it came with instructions that bishops had to keep it locked in a safe at all times.

Cardinal Ratzinger reinforced the strict cover-up policy by introducing a new principle: that the Vatican must have what it calls Exclusive Competence. In other words, he commanded that all child abuse allegations should be dealt with direct by Rome.

Patrick Wall, a former Vatican-approved enforcer of the Crimen Sollicitationis in America, tells the programme: “I found out I wasn’t working for a holy institution, but an institution that was wholly concentrated on protecting itself.”

And Father Tom Doyle, a Vatican lawyer until he was sacked for criticising the church’s handling of child abuse claims, says: “What you have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen.

“When abusive priests are discovered, the response has been not to investigate and prosecute but to move them from one place to another. So there’s total disregard for the victims and for the fact that you are going to have a whole new crop of victims in the next place. This is happening all over the world.”

The investigation could not come at a worse time for Pope Benedict, who is desperately trying to mend the Church’s relations with the Muslim world after a speech in which he quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who said that Islam was spread by holy war and had brought only evil to the world.

The Panorama programme is presented by Colm O’Gorman, who was raped by a priest when he was 14. He said: “What gets me is that it’s the same story every time and every place. Bishops appoint priests who they know have abused children in the past to new parishes and new communities and more abuse happens.”

Last night Eileen Shearer, director of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults said: “The Catholic Church in England and Wales (has) established a single set of national policies and procedures for child protection work. We are making excellent progress in protecting children and preventing abuse.”

Pope ‘obstructed’ sex abuse inquiry

Confidential letter reveals Ratzinger ordered bishops to keep allegations secret

Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had ‘obstructed justice’ after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church’s investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret.

The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

It asserted the church’s right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II’s successor last week.

Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. They accuse Ratzinger of committing a ‘clear obstruction of justice’.

The letter, ‘concerning very grave sins’, was sent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that once presided over the Inquisition and was overseen by Ratzinger.

It spells out to bishops the church’s position on a number of matters ranging from celebrating the eucharist with a non-Catholic to sexual abuse by a cleric ‘with a minor below the age of 18 years’. Ratzinger’s letter states that the church can claim jurisdiction in cases where abuse has been ‘perpetrated with a minor by a cleric’.

The letter states that the church’s jurisdiction ‘begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age’ and lasts for 10 years.

It orders that ‘preliminary investigations’ into any claims of abuse should be sent to Ratzinger’s office, which has the option of referring them back to private tribunals in which the ‘functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests’.

‘Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,’ Ratzinger’s letter concludes. Breaching the pontifical secret at any time while the 10-year jurisdiction order is operating carries penalties, including the threat of excommunication.

The letter is referred to in documents relating to a lawsuit filed earlier this year against a church in Texas and Ratzinger on behalf of two alleged abuse victims. By sending the letter, lawyers acting for the alleged victims claim the cardinal conspired to obstruct justice.

Daniel Shea, the lawyer for the two alleged victims who discovered the letter, said: ‘It speaks for itself. You have to ask: why do you not start the clock ticking until the kid turns 18? It’s an obstruction of justice.’

Father John Beal, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, gave an oral deposition under oath on 8 April last year in which he admitted to Shea that the letter extended the church’s jurisdiction and control over sexual assault crimes.

The Ratzinger letter was co-signed by Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone who gave an interview two years ago in which he hinted at the church’s opposition to allowing outside agencies to investigate abuse claims.

‘In my opinion, the demand that a bishop be obligated to contact the police in order to denounce a priest who has admitted the offence of paedophilia is unfounded,’ Bertone said.

Shea criticised the order that abuse allegations should be investigated only in secret tribunals. ‘They are imposing procedures and secrecy on these cases. If law enforcement agencies find out about the case, they can deal with it. But you can’t investigate a case if you never find out about it. If you can manage to keep it secret for 18 years plus 10 the priest will get away with it,’ Shea added.

A spokeswoman in the Vatican press office declined to comment when told about the contents of the letter. ‘This is not a public document, so we would not talk about it,’ she said.

high-tech Pope Benedict

Priests urged to go high-tech

Use all media tools to communicate, Pope Benedict says

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI has a new commandment for priests struggling to get their message across: Go forth and blog.

The pope, whose own presence on the Web has jumped in recent years, urged priests Saturday to use all multimedia tools at their disposal to preach the Gospel and engage in dialogue with people of other religions and cultures.

Just using e-mail or surfing the Web is often not enough: Priests should use cutting-edge technologies to express themselves and lead their communities, Benedict said.

“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich ‘menu of options’ might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web,” but priests are “challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources,” he said.

The message, prepared for the World Day of Communications, suggests such possibilities as images, videos, animated features, blogs and Web sites.

Benedict said young priests should become familiar with new media while still in seminary, though he stressed that the use of new technologies must reflect theological and spiritual principles.

“Priests present in the world of digital communications should be less notable for their media savvy than for their priestly heart, their closeness to Christ,” he said.

The 82-year-old pope has often been wary of new media, warning about what he has called the tendency of entertainment media, in particular, to trivialize sex and promote violence, while lamenting that the endless stream of news can make people insensitive to tragedies.

But Benedict has also praised new ways of communicating as a “gift to humanity” when used to foster friendship and understanding.

The Vatican has tried hard to keep up to speed with the rapidly changing field.

Last year, it opened a YouTube channel as well as a portal dedicated to the pope. The Pope2You site gives news on the pontiff’s trips and speeches and features a Facebook application that allows users to send postcards with photos of Benedict and excerpts from his messages to their friends.

Many priests and top prelates already interact with the faithful online. One of Benedict’s advisers, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, the archbishop of Naples, has his own Facebook profile and so does Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles.//

Our Comment-

We are doing that alread to save people from Church and come to God

New Testament myth

2010-01-21

Scholars will Explode New Testament Myth

Communication
University of Copenhagen
Nørregade 10, PO box 2177
1017 Copenhagen K

Contact: News editor
nyhedsredaktion@adm.ku.dk

Bible scholars across the world have for many years believed that two of the Gospels of the New Testament – The Gospel of St. Matthew and St. Luke respectively were partly based on the content of a supposedly lost scripture referred to as “Q”. In a new research project, researchers from the Faculty of Theology will attempt to establish that this lost scripture never existed.

Q: the x factor of the New Testament

The Gospel of Mark constitutes the oldest of the four gospels in the New Testament and is dated to approx. 70 A.D. The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke have for many years been considered as contemporaneous, and have been dated to 80-90 A.D. The two later gospels both contain material which also appears in the gospel of St. Mark and Bible researchers therefore believe that the older gospel has provided a common source for the two later ones. However, the two later gospels also share a considerable amount of content which is not to be found in the Gospel of St. Mark. A fact which has lead scholars to conclude that the authors of the later gospels must have had access to a second common source: the hypothetical lost text known as the Q document.

The Gospels as re-written Bible

The Research Project at the University of Copenhagen, which has just been granted 4.7 million kroner by the Velux Foundation, has been titled “The Gospels as re-written Bible”. During the next tree years a group of scholars will map the development of the four gospels in order to establish that the Gospel of Luke is not, as believed so far, a contemporary of the Gospel of Matthew, and that the shared content of the two is not to be explained by the existence of a lost scripture, but by the fact that the author of St. Luke’s Gospel used St. Matthew’s Gospel as well as that of St. Mark as basis for his own scripture.

- “Several circumstances render it probable that the two later gospels were not written at the same time – but that the Gospel of St. Luke was in fact written 30-50 years after the Gospel of St. Matthew. And in the light of that, it is far more likely that the author of St Luke’s Gospel was familiar with and used the Gospel of St. Matthew” says head of the research group, Professor Mogens Müller.

According to Professor Müller, the hypothesis of Q is widely accepted among theological scholars:

- “In most textbooks the idea that the gospels of Matthew and Luke should bear witness to a now lost source is treated as almost a fact. Probably a majority of New Testament scholars believe in Q. But as we will attempt to show, the hypothesis has severe flaws and should be replaced by a more obvious one”.

The fourth gospel

The mapping of the internal chronology of the gospels will also include the question of the fourth gospel – the Gospel of St. John – which according to Professor Müller is a difficult one:

- “There seems to be points of contact between the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John but the direction of influence is not unambiguous. We will examine if it is possible to understand the book of John as another source for the Gospel of Luke which in that case is to be seen as the youngest of the four gospels”.

St.Thomas Myth spread by Times of India-Chennai

 

Series of thefts puts spotlight on church security in the city

Despite Housing Priceless Relics, Churches Are Yet To Up Their Guard

Daniel P George | TNN

The theft at St Antonys church in Pudupet on January 10 has put the spotlight on security in churches across the city. The theft in which the robbers made off with the church offerings collected during the New Year as well as the money deposited in the hundi of a roadside temple nearby , is the latest in a spate of crimes in which burglars have targeted places of worship in and around the city.
On a Sunday in April 2009, burglars had struck at the Annai Velankanni Church in Besant Nagar and escaped with the offerings from a cash chest. Four months earlier, in January 2009, also on a Sunday, thieves broke into the church and stole the offerings.
A visit to the churches across the city shows that despite housing many valuabler elics and cash chests, security is lax at most of them.
At the Annai Velankanni Church in Besant Nagar, for instance, the CCTV cameras are not wellmaintained and there are no security guards at night.
Father Michael, who is in charge at the Velankanni shrine, however, maintains that there is tight security. We have 16 CCTVs and the ones near the shrine are on 24 hours. If there is any movement within the shrine, the lights come on, he says, adding that there is also a burglar alarm. Our cameras archive the recordings for six days, and I monitor the footage. We have night and day watchmen. Besides this, we have parish volunteers who help during the day so I would say we have tight security, he says. He adds that police patrolling supplements their efforts. The statue of Mary here is invaluable and people of all religions worship here, he adds. At the Santhome Basilica, the central hall has 14 wooden inscriptions depicting scenes from the last days of Christ. Another priceless relic is a threefoot statue of Virgin Mary, which is believed to have been brought from Portugal in 1541. The Basilica too has been targeted by thieves, who broke in and emptied four wooden boxes that held offerings from parishioners. Other sacred relics at the church are a bone of St Thomas and the head of a lance that is believed to have killed him. But security here is only in the forms of locks and watchmen. Regular visitors say the cameras are not maintained and there are no security guards at night. We have arranged security through a private agency and one of the sisters has the key to box that contains the relics, says Father Kannakiraj of Santhome Basilica. St Marys Church tucked away inside Fort St George has some of the most beautiful oil paintings of the crucifixion and Mary Magdalene. Though there is tight security at Fort St George which houses the state secretariat , the church is isolated within the compound with no security or CCTV cameras. At St Thomas Mount Church, there is a painting of Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, which is believed to have been painted by St Luke and brought to India by St Thomas. A senior parish priest who did not wish to be named says, Chennais churches are a treasure trove of antiques. It is time the church authorities made the effort to beef up security and work with the city police to safeguard these valuable items. daniel.george@timesgroup.com

UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE:

The oil painting of the Madonna, believed to be one of the seven painted by St Luke the Evangelist and brought to India by St Thomas. This painting is considered to be the oldest Christian painting in India

SACRED REMAINS:

Piece of a hand bone of St. Thomas which touched the wound of Jesus, was brought from Edessa in Greece and preserved in the museum at Santhome

PRICELESS PIECES OF HISTORY:

(Above) St Mary’s Church located at Fort St George, is the oldest Anglican church East of Suez and also the oldest British building in India. The altar piece, a depiction of the Last Supper, is unsigned but has obvious signs of the Raphaelite school and is believed that Raphael himself painted the central figures. The altar piece was brought to Madras by the British troops who stormed Puducherry in 1761; (Right) Tip of the lance that took the life of St Thomas which was recovered from the grave during a Portuguese excavation preserved at Santhome Basilica in Chennai
 
 
THE ARCHEALOGY SAYS THAT THE MYLAPUR KAPALEESWARAR TEMPLE WAS AT THE SANTHOME CHURCH SITE TILL 16TH Century.//

No single item is dated by Cabon 14 dating to 1st century. WHY TOI is meaninglessly promoting the fraud?

As per ACTA THOMAE – THOMAS WAS Twin of Jesus, Son of Mary born as Twins and more powerful than Jesus and died in the Desert Country, none of the Geography of this Syrian later work- Acts of Thomas meets today’s India.

What Chruch says about ACTA THOMAE?- in St. Thomas Christian Encyclopaedia, ed. George Menachery in which Article -The Acts of Thomas- by Rev.Anthony Poathoor.

- “The Acts of Thomas in its present form contains many Doctrinal Errors. Some Historians conclude that The Acts of Thomas is the work of an unknown heretic who made use of the Authority to support his own Theological Opinions. Some Other Authors have suggested that the present work is the corrupted form of an older Orthodox version. In the view of former, We can hardly call the text interpolated, because the additions increase nearly Ten-fold to the Original Text. There is no doubt that the present Acts of Thomas is unacceptable from the Doctrinal point of View”. Page- 24

Holy see’s Publisher “Burn Oates & Wash BouRne Ltd” has Published Multi Volume “Butler’s Lives of Saints” Edited by Rev.Alban Butler (with Nihil Obstat & Imprimatur from Two Archbishop for its Doctrinal Acceptance) says-

“.. the Syrian Greek who was probably the fabricator of the Story would have been able to learn from Traders and Travelers such details as the name Gondophorus with Tropical details.”. Pages 213-218, in Volume December.

The Authors have gone through all the major works of the claims of St.Thomas Indian visit claims and one of the highly acclaimed work of ‘The Early Spread of Christianity in India’- Alfred Mingana connected this with Apostle Thomas visit claims and clearly affirms-
“ It is likely enough that the Malabar Coast was evangelized from Edessa at a later date, and . that in the course of time a confused tradition.”
“It is likely enough that the Malabar Coast was Evangelized from Edessa at a Later date, and in the course of time a confused tradition connected this with Apostle Thomas himself.”

திருமயிலைத் திருத்தலம்- இலக்கிய, வரலாற்றுப் பார்வை,
பேராசிரியர். Dr.சு.ராஜசேகரன்.,1989,
Doctral Thesis done in 1986, on the Same name at Madras University, the Author was then working as Tamil Professor at Nandanam Govt. Arts College, Chennai.

The Author Analyses various Stone Inscriptions and Archeological findings from Kapalishwarar Temple and Santhome and gives his views.

இப்போதுள்ள கபாலிசுவரர் கோயில், நாயன்மார்களால் பாடப் பெற்ற பழைய கபாலிசுவரர் கோயில் என்ற பொதுவான நம்பிக்கை மக்களிடையே நிலவி வருகிறது. ஆனால், தொல்பொருள் ஆராய்ச்சியாளர்கள் சாந்தோமில் கண்டெடுத்த புதைபொருள்களிலிருந்து பழைய கோயில் வேறு இடத்தில் இருந்திருக்க வேண்டும் என்றும், பெரும்பாலும் சாந்தோம் கடற்கரையாக இருக்கலாம் என்றும் எண்ண வேண்டியிருக்கிறது.. .. பழைய கபாலிசுவரர் கோயிலலின் இடிபாடுகள் இப்போதுள்ள கோயிலுக்குச் சிறிது தொலைவில் கிழக்கு திசையில் சாந்தோம் கடற்கரையருகே கண்டு எடுக்கப்பட்டதே இதற்குக் காரணமாகும்.

1923இல் தொல்பொருள் ஆய்வுத் துறையினர் சாந்தோம் கதிட்ரலில் நிகழ்த்திய அகழ்வாராய்ச்சிகளால் கல்வெட்டுகளும், தூண்களும், சிலைகளும் கண்டெடுக்கப்பட்டன. கல்வெட்டுகள் சிவன் கோயிலைக் குறிக்கின்றன. கற்றூண்களிலும் கல்வெட்டுகள் காணப்பெறுகின்றன. மயிலோடு கூடிய முருகர் சிலையும் கண்டெடுக்கப்பட்டது. 1921இல் மறைத்திரு ஹோஸ்டன், சாந்தோம் கதிட்ரலில் கண்டெடுத்த வடமொழிக் கல்வெட்டு “கருவறை உட்பட எல்லாக் கட்டிடங்களும் மயிலாப்பூரிலுள்ள புகழ்பெற்ற சிவனுக்கும் பார்வதிக்கும் உரியவையாகும்” என்று குறிப்பிடுபகிறது. மற்றொரு தானக் கல்வெட்டில், “திருமயிலாப்பில் பூம்பாவை” என்று குறிப்பிடுப்படுவதாலும், பழைய கபாலிசுவரர் கோயில் கடற்கரையருகே இருந்திருக்க வேண்டும் என்பது புலனாகிறது.

அருணகிரிநாதர் திருப்புகளில் கபாலிசுவரர் கோயில் கடற்கரை அருகே இருந்தது என்று குறிப்பிடுப்படுவதால், பழைய கோயில் கடற்கரையருகே இருந்திருக்க வேண்டும் என்று கே.வி..இராமன் கருதிகிறார். பக்கம்287,288

இந்திய மக்கள் தொகைக் கணக்கெடுப்புத்துறை வெளியிட்ட சென்னை மாநிலக் கோயில்கள் (Temples of Madas State) என்னும் நூலில் காணப்படும் கருத்துக்கள் :
கி.பி. 16ஆம் நூற்றாண்டின் தொடக்கத்தில் சாந்தோம் கடற்கரையிலிருந்த கோயில் போர்த்துக்கீசியர்களால் அழிக்கப் பட்டிருக்க வேண்டும் என்று கூறுகிறது. இந்நூல் கூறும் புதிய செய்தி, இப்போதுள்ள கபாலிசுவரர் கோயிலும் குளமும் முந்நூறு ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன், மயிலை நாட்டு முத்தையப்ப முதலியாராலும் அவருடைய வாரிசுகளிலாலும் கட்டப்பட்டது என்பதேயாகும். (பக்-289 – Quotes Census of India-1961; Temples of Madras State, 1 Chingleput District and Madras City, P.204)

The Present Temple very clearly shows for Schoalrs that it was constructed only in 17th Cen. CE, few Tamil Schloars maintained that the Old Temple was in same place, and the Present Temple was constructed above it. Another Set of Scholars maintained that the Older Temple was in Sea Shore(Mostly the Present Santhome Cathedral) and the Author analyses various books on Mylapur Temple and comes to the Conclusion as below, and he before concluding quotes the Historic fact-
போர்த்துக்கீசியர்கள் இந்துக் கோயில்களை அழித்த செய்தியைக் கேள்விப்பட்டு இராமராயர் கி.பி. 1558இல், சாந்தோம் மீது படை எடுத்துப் போர்த்துக்கீசியரைப் பணிய வைத்துப் பின்னர்ப் பழுதுபட்ட கோயில்களைப் பழுதுபார்க்க ஆணையில்ட்ட செய்தியாலும் பழைய கபாலிசுவரர் கோயில் போர்த்துக்கீசியர்களால் .(Quotes from S.Kalyanasundaram-A Short History of Mylapore page-8) அழிக்கப் பட்டது என்ற முடிவுக்கு வரலாம்.
ஆகவே, முடிபாக, பழைய கபாலிசுவரர் கோயில், கடற்கரையருகே இருந்ததென்பதையும், கி.பி. பதினைந்தாம் நூற்றாண்டின் இறுதியில் போர்த்துக்கீசியரால் அழிக்கப் பட்டதென்பதையும், கி.பி. பதினாறாம் நுற்றாண்டில் இப்போதுள்ள இடத்தில் புதிய கோயில், மயிலை நாட்டு நயினியப்ப முத்தையப்ப முதலியார் மகன் முதலியாரால் கட்டப் பெற்றது என்பதையும் தெற்றென உணரலாம். -பக்கம் 291 திருமயிலைத் திருத்தலம்- இலக்கிய, வரலாற்றுப் பார்வை, பேராசிரியர்.Dr.சு.ராஜசேகரன்.,1989,

தோமோ நடபடிகள் என்னும் 3ம் நூற்றாண்டு நூல் தோமோ கொண்டோபரஸ் என்னும் மன்னன் நாட்டுக்கும் பின் மச்டய் என்னும் மன்னன் நாட்டில் ராணியையும் இளவரசனையும் சூன்யம் செய்து மதமாற்றம் செய்ததால் மரணதண்டனையில் கொன்றான் என வருகிறது.
மச்டய் நாடு பற்றி தோமோ நடபடிகள் கூறுவது: மச்டய் நாடு ஒரு பாலைவன நாடு, பாலைவனப் பகுதி.
The Ninth Act: of the Wife of Charisius.
87 And when the apostle had said these things in the hearing of all the multitude, they trode and pressed upon one another: and the wife of Charisius the king’s kinsman Ieapt out of her chair and cast herself on the earth before the apostle, and caught his feet and besought and said: O disciple of the living God, Thou Art Come Into A Desert Country, For We Live In The Desert.

THOMAS- IF Such person existed he never visited any part of Modern India, but preached in Desert Country and buried their, and during the time of the same King’s rule the body was taken out of the country.

The So called Madonna’ picture is dated to 10th or 11the Century, why these fraud date are put on an unconnected news ?