Two weeks ago, Anupama S. Chandran, 22, aggrieved and angry, stood outside the Kerala Secretariat holding a poster . “ Keralame... Lajjikku! (Shame on you, Kerala!)” read the letters in red against a black background. Anupama was one among the many desperate people who often stand outside the building in the hope that their voices will be heard. But a crowd driven by curiosity had gathered around her because her case was novel. The young woman was seeking the whereabouts of her child who she claims was forcibly separated from her by her parents when he was just three days old and given up for adoption without her consent.
This personal case has blown up into a political controversy, for Anupama’s parents are no ordinary people. Her father, P.S. Jayachandran, is a local Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader and her grandfather a former State committee member of the CPI(M). It has also led to discussions about a woman’s agency and choice — Anupama had the baby boy with her partner who was married to someone else. The case, which weaves together familial, social, political, and legal issues , has put the Pinarayi Vijayan government in a tight spot over the last few weeks.
Also read: Kerala Government orders investigation into child missing case
A controversial relationship
Anupama, a former leader of the Students’ Federation of India, gave birth to a baby boy on October 19, 2020. Her partner, Ajith Kumar B., is a former leader of the Democratic Youth Federation of India. Both of them used to live in the Peroorkada area of Thiruvananthapuram.
Anupama’s family came to know about her relationship with Ajith and the pregnancy only when she left home to be with him in the beginning of September. Her parents balked at the move as Ajith, a Dalit Christian, was a married man. They persuaded her to return home, especially since she was in the eighth month of pregnancy. But once Anupama was home, her parents did not allow her to contact Ajith.
Soon, there was also talk about an abortion. Anupama says she was made to undergo a scan to confirm the pregnancy. She was then taken to a hospital at Manjeri in Malappuram where a doctor ruled out abortion, but said the delivery could be advanced and the baby given up for adoption if she wished. Anupama refused this option. While in hospital, she contracted COVID-19 and was shifted to a COVID-19 centre. With her family not around to keep a watch on her, Anupama took the opportunity to get in touch with Ajith who promptly reached Malappuram to pick her up. Anupama’s parents once again pleaded with her to return home. They promised her that she could have her child after her sister’s wedding was solemnised in 10 days, she says.
But back in Thiruvananthapuram, Jayachandran and his wife Smitha James changed tack again. Less than a week later, Anupama was taken to a hospital in Kayamkulam in Alappuzha district and an attempt was made to convince her that the baby she was carrying had health issues and was unlikely to survive. Anupama alleges that during her pregnancy, Jayachandran hit her whenever she implored him to allow her to speak to Ajith and kept harping on Ajith’s caste. At the fag end of her pregnancy, she was mentally and physically harassed, she says, but remained stoic for the sake of her child.
On October 18, Anupama was admitted to a hospital in Kattakada, not far from Thiruvananthapuram city. There, she tested positive for COVID-19 again. Her mother told her that the doctors had advised her to have the child through cesarean section. The next day, Anupama gave birth to a baby boy. Three days later, she was discharged from the hospital. But instead of being taken home, she was driven to her father’s friend’s house. En route, her father, who was in another car, stopped the car she was travelling in and took the baby away from her. Anupama, still recovering from childbirth and COVID-19, tried to protest, but her father covered her mouth and hit her, she says, even as her mother grabbed the baby and put him inside Jayachandran’s car. That was the last time Anupama saw her baby.
The next morning, Smitha told Anupama that the baby would be kept away from her until her sister’s wedding was solemnised. “I was assured that the family would not hurt him and would let me meet him,” Anupama says. Anupama was shifted to her grandmother’s house in Thodupuzha. Once in a while, she was taken to Ernakulam for a counselling session. Through all this, she kept asking about her child but was not given any answer. She was brought back to Thiruvananthapuram in time for her sister’s wedding on February 4. A reluctant Anupama then accompanied the family to distribute wedding invites. No one could have suspected anything was wrong.
The day before the wedding, Anupama, now desperate and losing hope, got hold of her grandmother’s phone, told Ajith about their boy, and asked him to come by the house two days later. When Ajith reached her house, he was threatened and told that Anupama did not want to meet him. His divorce had been finalised by then; yet Anupama’s family remained firm that she could not go with him. Later, she came to know that Ajith had been summoned to the police station five or six times and threatened.
Soon, Anupama was back at her grandmother’s house in Thodupuzha. She was told she would not get her child back and was threatened with incarceration in a mental health institution. Anupama managed to flee the house on March 19. She and Ajith intensified their efforts to trace their child. On April 19, she filed a complaint with the Peroorkada police, but no FIR was registered. On April 21, the couple was shocked to learn that Jayachandran had told the police that he had given away the child legally.
The desperate search for a child
On April 19, the same day she filed a complaint with the Peroorkada police, Anupama handed over a letter to CPI(M) district secretary Anavoor Nagappan and CPI(M) leader Jayan Babu, with a copy to the party State committee, seeking action against her parents. On April 22, Anupama got in touch with the District Child Welfare Committee (CWC) through videoconference, stated her case, and forwarded the relevant documents. The CWC chairperson told her later that there was no point in submitting a complaint. The CWC could do something only after the police located the child, the chairperson said.
A frustrated Anupama then met with the State Police chief, Loknath Behera, on April 29, who directed that a case be registered under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act (JJ Act). However, no action was taken. After an agonising wait of two months, the couple finally submitted a complaint to the Chief Minister’s Office on July 12.
It was in the last week of July, says Anupama, that the police handed over a consent letter produced by her father for her to read. The consent letter, allegedly signed by her, said that Anupama was not equipped to look after the child and was voluntarily handing him over.
Anupama says the letter dates back to October 15, 2020, when her parents and two others asked her to sign on a stamp paper. When Anupama insisted on reading the document before signing it, she was hit and threatened with grievous injury to the child in her womb and her signatures were forcibly taken.
In the first week of August 2021, some 10 months after she had had her child, Anupama found out from a police officer that her father had given up the child for the Kerala State Council for Child Welfare’s ‘Ammathottil’ electronic cradle. The scheme was instituted as a “means of providing better life conditions for the destitute, abandoned and relinquished children.” The police officer had also learned from the District CWC that two children had been given to the cradle on October 22 night. The gender of one of them had been wrongly registered as female and then corrected. Anupama is incredulous that a specialised adoption agency would commit such a grave error. “What about the doctor examining the child for the first time at the hospital? Will they not investigate if the child is a boy or a girl,” she asks.
The couple rushed to the CWC the same day. They were told that one of the children had been given in adoption but the other was still at the council. Anupama was told she could meet the child and also apply for a DNA test if she wished. Anupama went in to see her child but came out confused and disappointed. She did not believe that the child was hers. To be sure, she applied for a DNA test; the result confirmed her suspicion. When Anupama expressed the possibility that the child given away for adoption was hers, a CWC member told her that there was no point in approaching the court as she would not get the child back.
Discouraged, thwarted at every turn, and made to run from pillar to post for months to get back her child, Anupama went public with her predicament a few days later. Within days, the police registered an FIR against Jayachandran, Smitha, their elder daughter and son-in-law, and two others based on a complaint made by Anupama to the new State Police chief a month ago.
Not only the police, but the Kerala State Council for Child Welfare where Jayachandran said he had left Anupama’s child is also under a cloud now. Anupama has alleged that the council abetted the adoption process. Ajith had visited the council in October last year after seeing an advertisement about a child being found at the council, she says. He had met the council’s general secretary Shiju Khan J.S., but Shiju did not do anything to help him.
Jayachandran had earlier claimed that the child had been left in the Ammathottil with Anupama’s consent. He had also claimed that the child had been taken to the council through a judicial mechanism that ensured his protection. Anupama counters these claims. “If my child was surrendered to the CWC, then due legal steps should have been followed,” she says. The Minister for Women and Child Development, Veena George, has also said that the child was not surrendered to the CWC.
A letter, purportedly from a section of employees of the council to the Chief Minister who is the president of the council, alleges that on the night in question, the Ammathottil was not functioning. Jayachandran brought the child to the council with Shiju’s knowledge and handed him over to a nurse on duty. The child was taken to a hospital for a check-up and the child’s gender was registered as female. The motive behind the gender change and the correction is suspect, says Anupama, but Shiju argues that all the legal procedures were followed by the council.
In a tight spot
Meanwhile, with the case grabbing the headlines, the CPI(M) found itself in an embarrassing position. It has scrambled to contain the political fallout of the adoption scandal. The Congress-led United Democratic Front as well as the Bharatiya Janata Party have said that the episode has undermined the CPI(M)’s credibility as a pro-women party.
Many communist leaders have been critical of the manner in which the issue has been dealt with. Revolutionary Marxist Party leader K.K. Rema, who moved an adjournment motion on the issue, accused the CPI(M) apparatchiks of abetting the crime to “protect the family’s twisted sense of honour”. CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat called the incident an “honour crime” and a wrong of “immense... proportion.” But her intervention at the Chief Minister’s level to reunite the parents and child failed. CPI(M) central committee member P.K. Sreemathy also admitted that her efforts to rope in the Chief Minister’s Office to help the mother trace her child yielded no result.
In a damage-control exercise, the government ordered a probe into the procedures and timeline of events since the child was received at the council. The Women and Child Development Department, which is the State Adoption Resource Agency, filed a petition in the family court on Anupama’s demand for the return of her child before the court passed final orders on the adoption. Veena George said the case was rare and complicated, and the mother would get justice. The party went silent on its earlier position that neither the CWC nor the police had erred in the matter.
Anupama is happy about the support she has received but she is also cautious. Had the CPI(M) acted at the outset, her child would not have been given up for adoption, she says. Anavoor says that a letter from Anupama to Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, former CPI(M) State secretary, was forwarded to the district office in the first week of September this year. Following its receipt, Jayachandran was asked to return the child to his daughter. It was then that he revealed that the child had been left in the Ammathottil. Following this, Anupama was advised to take the legal route to get her child back, and assured of necessary support by the party.
Anupama says that even amid all the claims of support, the party has continued to speak out against Ajith. Anavoor says the party cannot condone Ajith entering into a relationship with Anupama when he was still married to someone else. Jayachandran had brought the matter to his attention and sought the party’s intervention, he says. Ajith’s father, who was a party area committee secretary, was asked to dissuade his son from pursuing this relationship. The party remains firm on this stance, he says.
The party position has brought into the spotlight questions about a woman’s choice against the background of prevailing moral and social norms. Anupama’s struggle has struck a chord with many, especially the youth who have been dismayed at the lengths to which her parents have gone to separate the mother from her child. Activist P.E. Usha says, “The family is not above the rights of a citizen. How can a man offer up his grandchild for adoption just because he disapproves of his daughter’s choice of a partner? The issue at stake is Anupama and her choice.”
The question at the core of the case
The family court has stayed the adoption proceedings after Anupama argued that the child was put up for adoption against her will and her consent had been obtained through illegal means. The court also said that the CWC, which Anupama alleged had refused to return the baby on the ground that the adoption procedures were already in motion, could decide on a DNA test to determine the biological parentage of the child, besides adjudicating on whether the baby had been abandoned or surrendered.
The lack of clarity on whether the child was abandoned or surrendered with Anupama’s consent is at the core of this case. The procedures to be followed in the case will be guided by this fact, which is for the police to probe. If the child was left at the council by the grandfather without any substantial reason, it could attract the provisions of Section 75 of the JJ Act, which reads: “Whoever, having the actual charge of, or control over, a child, assaults, abandons, abuses, exposes or wilfully neglects the child or causes or procures the child to be assaulted, abandoned, abused, exposed, or neglected in a manner likely to cause such child unnecessary mental or physical suffering, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years or with fine of one lakh rupees or with both.”
Questions are also being raised about the role of the Child Welfare Council, a registered society under the Travancore-Cochin Literary, Scientific and Charitable Societies Registration Act, and the large amounts allocated to it by the government at a time when the CWC, a quasi-judicial body created under the law, existed. The CWC can conduct an inquiry and give directions to the police or the District Child Protection Unit, but its alleged failure to follow due procedure when approached by Anupama has raised eyebrows. Usha alleges that Jayachandran used the government machinery for a criminal act, knowing well that his daughter was opposed to giving up the child. “The complications that have arisen are owing to failure of these agencies to follow procedure. Whether the council and the CWC hastened the adoption procedures to avoid any claim to the child needs to be investigated,” says a senior lawyer.
While Anupama’s chances of getting her child back seem brighter in view of the concerns over procedural lapses and the government throwing its weight behind her, the court’s final verdict will be eagerly awaited. And awaited not just by her and Ajith but by an entire State which has been keenly following this case about a mother’s quiet determination to find her child.
Published - November 06, 2021 01:11 am IST
