Indian ministry for women and childhood development has ordered the immediate inspection of all Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity after two employees at one shelter were accused of child-trafficking scandal.
The inspections were announced after a charity in the state of Jharkhand, India, was shut down earlier this month following the arrest of a nun and a worker accused of selling four babies from childcare the home, which provides shelter for unmarried pregnant women. Police have found all four children.
Two staff named Sister Konsalia Balsa and social worker Anima Indwar were accused of trying to sell a fourth baby, a two-month old boy born in March, for about £1,325. The parents, a couple from Uttar Pradesh state, were told the proposed adoption was legitimate and that the money was for medical expenses.
The Missionaries of Charity, established in 1950 by Mother Teresa. This organization stopped assisting adoptions in India in 2015 after the government made it easier for single, divorced or separated people to adopt children.
India has more than 230,000 children in official and unofficial shelters, according to the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, but estimates of the number of orphans in the country are as high as 30 million.
In February last year, police in West Bengal arrested the heads of an adoption centre who they accused of selling at least 17 children to couples in Europe, the US and Asia.
Police say Balsa has confessed to her role in the trafficking case but the bishop of Ranchi, the Jharkhand state capital, said this week the confession was extracted under pressure and accused the police of “treating the whole of Mother Teresa’s organisation as a criminal gang”.
The charity had said “We are completely shocked by what has happened in our home in Ranchi,” “It should have never happened. It is against our moral convictions. We are carefully looking into the matter.”
“We will take all necessary precautions that it never happens again, if it has happened,” Sunita Kumar of the Missionaries of Charity.
>Juthy Saha
Mother Teresa Homes Under Baby-Selling Investigation
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