'Was I also child-trafficked?'

Ananya Sengupta in New Delhi, TT: Ian Anand Forber-Pratt's thoughts about the future are filled with the joys of fatherhood, but news of a baby-sale racket being busted in Calcutta has dragged him back into a past mired in emotional confusion about his own circumstances.

Ian, 36, was born to parents he never knew in the now infamous Sree Krishna Nursing Home on MG Road, which the CID has identified as one of the key players in the child trafficking racket unfolding since last week.

Adopted by an American couple and taken to a new country within three months of his birth in 1980, Ian would grow up to often wonder what might have been had he been raised by his biological parents. It might have remained a question less prickly had the name Sree Krishna Nursing Home not leapt back at him from a newspaper last week like a blast from the past.

"I am shocked," says Ian of the piece of news that has disturbed his peace.

A foster care crusader, he is currently the national program director at the Centre of Excellence in Alternative Care of Children and the Children's Emergency Relief International (CERI), which are non-profit initiatives aimed at finding alternatives to institutional care for children.

"The people at Sree Krishna Nursing Home had been kind to me when I went back to India for the first time in 2006 to find my roots. I now wonder if my adoption process was legal, if I was trafficked, if I was treated the same way as the children who have been rescued," says Pratt, whose blog on his reaction to the baby-sale racket has gone viral among adoptees.

Like Ian, most adoptees born in the MG Road and Behala nursing homes raided by the CID are questioning the circumstances of their adoption in the comments section of the blog, a link to which is on his Facebook page.

Many of these people have written about feeling sad and confused about their past since hearing of babies being trafficked from these nursing homes. "Over the past few days, those of us born at Sree Krishna Nursing Home and those who lived in orphanages 'supplied' by other related nursing homes can't help but be a little emotional. Were we trafficked? We will never know," the blog says.

Court documents about the circumstances in which these adoptees were separated from their biological parents contain the usual descriptions such as "mother young and unmarried" and "father unknown". These are unkind truths many of the adoptees had apparently learnt to live with until the crackdown on infant trafficking opened up old wounds.

They are now haunted by images of their mothers being possibly forced to give them up or being told that they were stillborn. "There is a photo that I have of myself from 2006 in front of the nursing home where I was born. I am in the frame with my adoptive sister, but you can see a woman, her face covered in the picture as well. Looking at this photograph, I see a woman coming out of the nursing home crying," Ian recounts.

"What would have been the reason? Did she leave her child and get money in exchange? Or was there something else? We didn't ask at that time. But now it has become very relevant. I didn't ask the question then, maybe I should have."

Ian's 2006 trip didn't throw up any clue to his roots. "But then again, I didn't expect to," he writes.

For some, the solution to finding what really happened with them as babies lies in an open system of root searches for adoptees - allowing them access to documents that reveal the names and addresses of their biological parents. For others, the solution lies in strengthening family systems.

Indian laws allow adoptees to find their parents only if they have not requested anonymity. In many cases, there are no records about the child other than where and how he or she was found.

"I am not sure about opening up root searches as it would expose birth mothers who might have been unwed at the time to complications. However, I think that I would want to meet my biological parents, but my parents (adoptive) will always be my family. However, knowing my biological parents would expand my sense of family," Ian says.

He and many like him feel that the only way to combat trafficking of the kind unravelling in Bengal would be to move the focus of the child protection system in India from placement paradigm to family success paradigm - basically help parents so that poverty does not force them to relinquish their children.

"Trafficking can be reduced only when families are supported enough to not relinquish their children, hoping that they would get better lives elsewhere. They shouldn't be forced to give up their children for some amounts of money, convincing themselves that it's better for the child. Both government and non-government organisations have to work in tandem for this to work," Ian suggests.

For now, he and his fellow adoptees just want to leave all the questions racing through their heads and move on. It's hard, though.

"Nothing can be done now by delving into the past. We have to ensure that no other child has to answer these questions in the future. Most of us are going through a range of emotions, but many do not have the vocabulary to express the feelings which border around sadness and anger. Who will understand what we are going through?" says Ian, whose wife Nargis is due to give birth in January.