Delhi abandons 300 babies every year

Only 16 government hospitals in Delhi receive over 300 abandoned newborns every year with some of them being thrown on the streets for having medical deficiencies.

Updated on: Mar 24, 2010, 23:59:26 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Only 16 government hospitals in Delhi receive over 300 abandoned newborns every year with some of them being thrown on the streets for having medical deficiencies.

Thankfully, majority of them are adopted within India and abroad.

“It is a tip of an iceberg,” said Aparna Sareen, a volunteer with Campaign Against Child Trafficking (CACT), who had filed a series of Right To Information (RTI) applications in the last one-year to dig out this information.

“Most of the unwarranted children are born in private hospitals and we don’t have way to access that information.”

The RTI replies revealed a worrying fact that most people, who abandoned newborns did not opt for relinquishing them legally as provided under the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act, 2009.

“A person can present a case for relinquishing a child with the Child Welfare Committee,” said Raj Mangal Prasad, of NGO Pratidhi.

But this does not happen. Around 60 children were relinquished in adoption homes but Sareen said there was no information on who left them there.

Apparently unaware about this provision, around 600 children were found abandoned, between 2007 and 2009, mostly in dustbins and drains. And, they landed in 16 government hospitals.

“We have seen newborns with dog bites all over,” said Charu Makkar, member of Child Welfare Committee Nirmal Chayya. Under the JJ Act, the CWC declares an abandoned child legally free for adoption.

CWC president Neera Mallik, said: “Children with medical deficiencies at birth are also left to die on roads. Police bring some of them to us but we don’t have facilities to take care of them.”

Despite over 300 children abandoned every year, there is shortage of children for adoption with most agencies in Delhi able to meet only half of the demand.

As only June 2009, 1,266 parents in India and 243 foreigners were waiting for children to adopt from Delhi homes. It happens in a country where a child dies every two hours because of malnourishment, infant mortality, infanticide or female foeticide.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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