Adoption row: No progress report on Jennifer Haynes

By: Mayura Janwalkar

Mumbai: After spending more than a year without an identity in India, the case of Jennifer Haynes, 28, who was deported to India 20 years after her foreign adoption, may be set in motion.

The Bombay high court on Tuesday directed the inspection of the progress report filed with the court after Haynes's foreign adoption was allowed in 1989.

As a procedure, the foreign adoption agency that processes the adoption of a child is supposed to file a progress report of the child with the court from time to time until the child attains adulthood.

But Haynes's advocate Pradeep Havnur said, "We have examined the records pertaining to Haynes's adoption. Neither the Indian adoption agency nor its American counterpart has filed any progress reports in all these years since her adoption."

Additional solicitor general DK Khambata told the court that the Central Adoption Regulation authority too has called upon the Americans for International Aid and Adoption, the agency that processed Haynes's adoption in 1989 for the progress reports filed by it.

Haynes was deported to Mumbai in July 2008 owing to incomplete formalities at the time of adoption as a result of which she did not gain American citizenship in spite of having been adopted by an American family and lived there for the past 20 years.

Justice Ranjana Desai and justice Mridula Bhatkar will hear the case on December 10.