Court to decide custody of missing Ludhiana girl adopted by Gujarat couple

Tribune Web Desk 
Chandigarh, August 28

An 11-year-old Ludhiana girl went missing in May 2018, and the police failed to trace her. She was put up for adoption in Gujarat while she had her family back home in Punjab. 

The callousness of the administration has now left both the biological and adoptive parents devastated as it is now on the court to decide who will get custody of the girl, reported Newsfeel. 

Within weeks of having gone missing, the girl found a new family in Ahmedabad. The girl had flashbacks, in which she recalled her biological parents. 

The Ahmedabad couple have now filed an annulment of the adoption at a Ludhiana court. The girl has been sent back to a child protection home over the dispute. 

The girl, Veera, lived in Ahmedabad for five months in complete peace. 

The couple—Kamaljeet Mehendiratta and his wife Sheeba—enrolled her at an international school in the city.

However, Veera soon started missing her parents in Punjab. The Mehendirattas decided to look for her biological family and started their journey to Ludhiana.

The biological parents, a daily-wage couple, had filed a missing person’s complaint on May 16, 2018. A report by Times of India said that the girl went missing on May 11 and was put up for adoption on May 14 itself. 

The biological parents—Gopal and Hema Tapri—have been making rounds of the police station for months but they were of no help. 

They said they only came to know that their girl is alive from the Mehendirattas who took all the pains to reach out. But they still cannot have their girl back as the matter is in court now. The girl has now been sent back to a children’s shelter.

The Punjab child adoption authorities have now said that the annulment of adoption can now only be decided by a court. Meanwhile, the little girl and two families have been left shattered.