Bombay high court registry gets a week to trace adoption papers

By Mayura Janwalkar | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA

The high court registry may have to search for 35-year-old original documents, perhaps stored in a forgotten shelf, in the case of the inter-country adoption of Daksha Van Dijck, 34, a Dutch psychologist who has sought to trace her biological roots.

Van Dijck, adopted in 1975 by Dutch national Johan Van Dijck and raised in Netherlands, returned to India 2001 in search of her biological parents.

But what Van Dijck found was reason to believe that she may have been kidnapped as a baby, and given away in adoption.

Van Dijck, who lives in Maastricht in Netherlands, moved the Bombay high court along with Anjali Pawar-Kate of Against Child Trafficking, an international NGO, against the Mumbai police commissioner and the senior inspector of Matunga police station, seeking a court direction for them to register an FIR against Shraddhashram Mahilasharm, based on a complaint filed by Van Dijck.

The police have submitted an affidavit to court, stating that they have tried to locate the documents of Van Dijck’s inter-country adoption, but they have been submitted to the high court.

“Where is the high court record? Just saying it’s available in the high court is not enough,” justice BH Marlapalle said on Monday.

The court called on the prothonotary and senior master of the high court to take stock of the availability of the record. The court has given the registry a week to inform the court whether the record is available.