Adoption offers pour in for raped teen’s baby

BAREILLY, UTTAR PRADESH: A 14-year-old rape survivor, whose futile legal battle to terminate her unwanted pregnancy made national headlines, was on Friday besieged

BAREILLY, UTTAR PRADESH: A 14-year-old rape survivor, whose futile legal battle to terminate her unwanted pregnancy made national headlines, was on Friday besieged by requests from dozens of couples offering to adopt the baby she delivered a day earlier.

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Relatives said 24 couples — some from places such as Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Assam — approached them at the Bareilly district hospital with adoption requests.

“They called me yesterday (Thursday) and many came to meet me today. All of them are ready to adopt the child,” her father said, sitting under a tree outside the maternity ward.

The girl, repeatedly raped by a local villager on the false promise of marriage, had desperately sought the court’s permission to abort the foetus.

Her plea for abortion was first rejected when she was 25-week pregnant. Subsequent requests were also rejected since laws did not permit medical termination beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The girl and her parents maintained that the baby she carried in her womb had no future unless the alleged rapist accepted her as his wife.

The father also said he was too poor to feed another mouth and cannot live with the stigma of a child born out of wedlock.

The girl gave birth to the child on Thursday in an ambulance after an auxiliary nurse at a local health centre refused to help in the delivery after being informed she was a rape victim. The girl was directed to go to the district hospital.

The young mother and her parents are yet to make up their mind on what to do with the new born. They said they were annoyed with the requests so soon after the delivery. “Nobody is bothered about the condition of the girl or my family. All they want is the child. I am tired of all this now,” the father said.

“A woman from Bahedi (50 km from Bareilly) came to meet me in the morning. She said she had no children and wanted to adopt the child,” the father said.

Another woman from Bareilly city who met the girl’s father, said on condition of anonymity, “I cannot conceive because of a medical condition. So I met him (father) and requested him to let me adopt the child.”