Belgian woman in Madurai to trace roots, suspects adoption racket
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Madurai: Aruna Leruitte, a 33-year-old Belgian national, arrived in Madurai on Wednesday to trace her biological family, nearly three decades after she was adopted from a now-blacklisted agency suspected of child trafficking.
Aruna was adopted in 1994 through Malaysian Social Service (MSS), an agency later exposed for fabricating documents and kidnapping children for international adoption. Her adoption papers mention Palayam, a village in Madurai district, as her place of origin.
She is now preparing to file a petition in the Madras high court, seeking access to her birth records. "This December, I will complete five years of searching for my mother," said Aruna, who works as a secretary in Belgium.
Aruna was raised with love by her adoptive mother, who died of cancer when Aruna was 16. She now lives with her adoptive father and brother, also adopted, from Bengaluru. She said she had constantly faced bullying in Belgium for her dark skin.
Her legal counsel, Anjali Pawar of the Adoptee Rights Council, said there are significant inconsistencies in Aruna's records. According to available documents, she was admitted to the MSS Child Care Centre in 1993 as a child born out of wedlock.
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"But the timeline suggests she may have been taken from her family without consent when she was around 1.5 years old," Pawar said.
MSS came under scrutiny in 2005 for sending kidnapped children abroad under the guise of legal adoption. "It's still happening in different forms," Pawar said, adding that oversight by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) needs to be decentralised.
"After Kolkata, Tamil Nadu has become a major hub for such rackets. These truths surface only when someone goes looking," she added.
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