Savithri's Modus Operandi

Savithri's Modus Operandi

Savithri was once known as "Murgi" for the manner in which she fretted at the loss of a hen while living in the Nampally area of the city in the 1960s. She started the Kokila Home in the 1970s in Tandur, where her father worked in the Railways. Somewhere along the way the heart that ached for the loss of a bird inured itself to human feelings. As her adoption business grew Savithri made several trips to the US, acquired a green card and even got her two daughters married there.

Representatives of foreign adoptive agencies established contact with the Bethany Home, which had a licence from the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), the body that oversees adoptions in India. Savithri's agents and midwives scoured the tandas in Mahbubnagar, Ranga Reddy, Medak and Nalgonda districts in Andhra Pradesh and Gulbarga to spot pregnant Lambadas. They struck deals and even delivered the babies to Savithri's home hours after their birth. Two midwives, Parvatibai and Gouribai, were arrested by the Karnataka Police recently. Brokers talked the parents into parting with their children for sums ranging between Rs 1,000 and Rs 3,000. Savithri paid successful brokers Rs 5,000-10,000 but charged the adoptive parents between $2,000 and $5,000 (Rs 2.3 lakh). Indian families paid up to Rs 3 lakh. The sum was described as a "processing fee" for preparing documents and greasing palms to pry the all-important no-objection certificate out of family courts. Plausible, given the country's bewildering adoption procedures.

Savithri maintained contacts with local politicians. So confident was she of escaping the law that she did not maintain correct and updated records. And just in case there were snoopers around, Savithri kept four dogs at Bethany. She manipulated records to show children had been immunised long after they had died due to neglect. In fact, this allowed her to use the papers for another child with the same name.

Lambada girls, because they are fair complexioned, are coveted. The tribals are easy prey as they believe that the third, sixth or the ninth child to be born, if a girl, is inauspicious. "We do not give away a daughter if she happens to be the first or second born," asserts Bhimi Bai of Pedda Tanda in Gulbarga. It is an assertion that is as coldly pragmatic as Savithri's calculator.

Last year, 706 children (96 boys, 610 girls) were brought to seven placement organisations in Andhra Pradesh, of whom 455 were successfully placed for adoption, 302 with Indian families and 153 with overseas foster parents. Licensed placement agencies source children directly from the countryside. At times, they bank on other orphanages and homes-which find it hard to resist the temptation of making money. In Hyderabad, the Radha Kishan Home, from where six children were moved to Shishu Vihar, and Precious Moments- run by Anita Sen, wife of an IPS officer-from where 54 children were taken, have ties with former state minister Roda Mistry's Indian Council of Social Welfare, one of the four authorised placement agencies in Andhra Pradesh.

"The raids are giving everybody in the business a bad name," fumes Mistry. Yet she has no convincing answer to why authorised agencies play postman for others in getting certificates for the transfer of children. And no one seems to have an answer as to why the state Government remained silent for two years after the 1999 rescue of 180 children from ASD and the Good Samaritan Home. The government order of April 18 to regulate movement of children from nursing homes and hospitals came only after news trickled in that Savithri had fled the coop.

Fortunately, the decision to make it mandatory for all nursing homes and hospitals to record births and deaths and to admit abandoned children in specified homes may act as a deterrent. As will a directive requiring officials to register every abandoned child and upload their details on a website, apanganwadi.com. "A stock taking of all agencies and a review of the procedures is overdue," feels state Director for Women and Child Welfare Shalini Mishra. The directorate will set up an adoption cell that will be authorised to issue licences and monitor the child placement agencies. A separate board will supervise local orphanages.

One should also perhaps peek over the shoulder at the tandas, for a portion of the mess lies in the wretched condition of the Lambadas. "The practice of dowry has replaced voli or bride price," says Bhukya Bhangya, a Lambada himself and history lecturer at Hyderabad's Nizam College. Traditionally, young men paid a bride price of seven bullocks and Rs 116-1,116 for girls. Now the tables have turned. "Parents have to pay a dowry of Rs 40,000 for a jobless youth and at least Rs 1 lakh for a clerk," says Bhangya. You could call it seed capital for the most dehumanising trade of all-adoption.

—With A. Rammohan Rao, Stephen David and Natasha Israni