Stealing newborn babies is a crime as old as human history. Who has not heard how the Holy Prophet King Solomon (RA) decided the case between two women, both claiming a baby was her child. Even then, it is shocking that this crime happens in the 21st century and in a modern metropolis.
On June 9 a newborn babygirl was stolen from a maternity hospital in New Karachi. Mercifully, the Anti-Violent Crime Unit (AVCU) of the police recovered the stolen baby on June 11.
The baby was stolen by the midwife and sold to a childless couple for Rs 40,000. Anybody would condemn the midwife for committing such a heinous crime, but one hesitates to condemn the couple who purchased the baby. What desperation drove them to do it? The couple are not wealthy, as nobody is in New Karachi which is nothing but a huge labour colony for people working in the factories. The very fact that they paid Rs 40,000 for the baby proves how desperate they were to have a child.
In a country where people produce like rabbits, to be childless is the greatest stigma. Childless couples from the educated middle class will go to the late Mrs Gammar Isphani's Naunihal or Sattar Edhi's Home and legally adopt a child from these institutions which shelter unwanted and orphaned babies. As for the very rich and the poor classes of society, adoption is not an option or at least not done openly and legally.
The rich and the labour classes, though they are at the two extreme ends of the pecking order, subscribe to the same archaic cultural norms which stipulate that a child must be of one's flesh and blood. This is essential to ensure continuity of the bloodline as well as prevent the wealth and property of the deceased parents from going into the wrong hands, thus depriving their child of his or her inheritance.
An adopted child does not have the same inheritance rights as a child of one's blood in the Sharia, which is the law these classes uphold over and above, and in contravention of, statute law passed by parliament.
There is also the question of marriage. If it is known in these classes that a marriageable girl or boy is adopted there is hesitation among their community to give their own daughter's or son's hand in marriage to the adopted child.
There are other problems which childless couples who resort to secret purchase of a baby may not realise at the time they take the baby. Persons who can steal a baby and sell it without compunction, have no moral breakshoes. They will proceed from kidnapping to blackmail. Childless couples in both the rich and poor classes are vulnerable to such exploitation.
I have heard real-life stories form people of the rich and labour classes about the exploitation of childless couples who had secretly purchased a child. The truth will out, of course, as there is no shortage of gossips and busybodies who worm out the truth and spread it about simply for the pleasure of seeing someone squirm. No wonder the Holy Quran strongly condemns slanderers and promises them hellfire.
The truth in such cases is nothing but an attempt to slander. It is pathetic how the childless couple will defend themselves, by continuing to state that the child is really their own flesh and blood. They only fear the one person who can expose them, the person who gave them the baby.
The deception is preplanned, as was the case of the childless couple in New Karachi. The same ploy is used. The childless woman, because she has often been to hospital or visited midwives in the hope of restoring her fertility, is contacted by a person, usually from the hospital or the midwife herself, who says so-and-so has agreed to give away her eighth child which is due in nine months of course a large sum will be charged.
The childless couple agrees and the wife begins her pretence that she is pregnant, gradually packing a growing bundle of cloth or a pillow over her stomach to make a fake swelling. As soon as they are informed of the delivery of the baby they were promised, the couple rushes off to hospital and returns home with "their" newborn baby.
There is such pathos in this deception there would be no need for the deception to plunge childless couples into a lifetime of tension and misery if only there was no social stigma. On the one hand, there is the cultural stigma which activates deception, kidnapping and blackmail, on the other hand, there are the numerous hurdles in the way of legal adoption.
Neither Naunihal nor the Edhi Home hands over a child to anybody who asks for one. The prospective parents are carefully vetted. Their mode of income, their character, their reputation in the circles they move even their home and their knowledge about parenting or their views on the subject are noted. Also important is whether the rest of their families, especially the prospective grandparents of the child to be adopted are comfortable with the adoption idea.
Other things are noted, such as whether the couple only want a newborn baby or are willing to take an older child and so forth. Both institutions do not hesitate to refuse prospective parents if they are not up to the mark of the institutions.
Most of the children in these institutions are foundlings and the prospective parents know it. In an interview, I had once asked the late Mrs Gammar Isphani about it. I wanted to know why Naunihal had so many children who had not been adopted. She said her institute loved the babies no matter if their parentage was doubtful and she would not hand over a single child if she was not satisfied with the prospective parents. The institution was able to support the children who could not be adopted. If Edhi was asked, he would probably repeat exactly what Mrs Ispahani had said.
People can be arrogant though, they think if they have money they are qualified for a baby form these institutions. A lady I know, who shall remain nameless, who had gone to Edhi for a child and was refused said, "Who does he think he is, refusing me a child for adoption? I felt very sorry for this childless woman, but I thanked God she was refused because her husband is an unstable character. For all his money and a truly good, and beautiful, wife he runs after other women.
The desire for a baby is a very, very human feeling. The tremendous longing for a child was brought home with full force when thousands of foreigners offered to adopt orphans form the earthquake hit northern areas in 2005. Pakistan refused to let the children go.
Did we do right in refusing the foreigners? Reactions are mixed. Some say the children would have been better off with loving parents than in an orphanage. Some say, as the children were Muslim it would not have been right to hand them over to Buddhists and people of other faiths. This latter view is judgmental.
For those who uphold the latter point of view I would like to mention the case of my hairdresser, who now lives in Lahore. She was a little girl, an Afghan refugee following the Russian invasion. She was adopted by a Norwegian UN-aid worker. She remains a Muslim while her father is a Christian. She is married to a Muslim, and when her little daughter began her Quran recitation classes, my hairdresser peremptorily warned the mullah, "Do not put anti-Christian ideas into my daughter's head. Her grandfather is a christian."