36-year-old Fabian Ricklin alias Ranabir pleads for help from Calcutta High Court.
New Delhi: More than 30 years after being abandoned by his biological mother, a 36-year-old Indian-origin man, now a Swiss national, has knocked the doors of the Calcutta High Court in search of his biological mother who is still believed to be living in Kolkata, after he failed to get any information on her from the government agencies and his foster care centre in Kolkata.
Born in 198 7, in a small hamlet near Kolkata, the 36-year-old Fabian Ricklin alias Ranabir was left abandoned and orphaned by his “unmarried” mother as he was born out of a wedlock relationship. Fabian was then put in an orphanage, Indian Society for Rehabilitation of Children in Kolkata and later put up for adoption.
Fabian Ricklin was adopted by a Swiss couple in 1989, when he was one year old. Since then, Fabian was raised by this Swiss couple in Switzerland, but the quest for finding his biological parents pushed him to file a petition before the Calcutta High Court seeking help from the law in India to find his parents who he suspect still resides in the city or the state (West Bengal).
Fabian Ricklin has pleaded before the Calcutta High Court to help him find his roots, his biological mother and to pass an order to transfer to him all the relevant documents and records pertaining to his roots.
Anjali Pawar, co-founder of an NGO, Adoptee Rights Council, has been given the power of attorney by Fabian Ricklin to fight his case and reunite him with his mother, as Fabian believes he would only visit India when he finds his mother. Fabian has not visited Kolkata till date.
Anjali Pawar, speaking to The Sunday Guardian, said that they had approached the Indian Society for Rehabilitation of Children who had done the adoption procedure for Fabian back then, “but then, they are not cooperating now”, claimed Anjali. Indian Society for Rehabilitation of Children is also the same foster care home where Fabian was brought into when his biological mother abandoned him, as he was born out of wedlock relationship.
“In India, this is a taboo and back in the 1980s it was more a societal evil to have a child without marriage. It was the helplessness of his mother that forced her to abandon her own child. But you know everyone one day realises the truth and wants to find back their roots, wants to know who they are and who their biological parents are. We are humans, we can never give up on the emotions of wanting to know or at least meet our own mother,” Anjali told this correspondent.
But according to Anjali, who has been given the legal rights by Fabian to help him find his biological mother in Kolkata, she has been searching for Fabian’s mother for the last two years, but has not been able to make much headway, as she says, she hits a “rock” each time she has to get details either from a government agency or the foster care centre from where Fabian was adopted.
“According to a Supreme Court judgement, when an adopted child attains the legal age of 18 years, he or she has the right to find his roots or trace back their biological parents. We have been trying to find Fabian Ricklin’s biological mother for the last two years, attain all the relevant documents, but nothing much has been achieved in these two years. The NGO that initiated the adoption process is not cooperating with us. We even visited their office twice in Kolkata, but Madhumita Roy, the secretary of this NGO pushed us out of her office and did not entertain any query,” Anjali told The Sunday Guardian.
The Sunday Guardian also tried to reach out to Madhumita Roy, but all calls and messages went unanswered till the time of going to the Press. When this correspondent asked, when did Fabian find out that he is adopted and what took him so long to start finding his parents, Anjali said, “When you are the only brown in your own house, you somehow start to understand from an early age that something is not okay, but then when one starts attending high school, it is also when peers sometimes bully and pressurise you. This is when even Fabian thought that he would want to know who he is and where he is from? I think the quest began from then on.”
Anjali and Arun are founders of an NGO, Adoptee Rights Council, that helps in tracking down Indian adoptees to their roots. The duo has so far been able to reunite 78 persons of Indian origin who had been adopted by foreign nationals with their biological parents. Arun Dole, himself an adoptee, had to fight for an astonishing 17 years to access original records pertaining to his biological mother. Arun was adopted by a German couple and was brought up in Germany, while Anjali Pawar is a human rights activist and lawyer from Pune who supports and helps people reunite with their biological mother.