South African woman adopts 18-mth-old girl

Patna: An 18-month-old girl child, who was abandoned by her biological parents, was on Thursday adopted by a South African woman. The social welfare department handed over the girl, Rajkumari, to Deena Lala after she completed all legal formalities for child adoption.
Lala, employee of a South African bank, had earlier adopted another girl child, Pavni, from an adoption agency in Pune a couple of years back.
Social welfare department principal secretary Vandana Kini said Lala had applied for child adoption on the website of Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA). "She was keen to adopt a child in the age group of 2 to 4 years. Rajkumari, who was staying in an orphan home in Nalanda, matched Lala's conditions and was handed over to her," Kini said.
In December last year, two-and-a-half-year-old Meenakshi, an inmate of the same Nalanda orphan home, was adopted by an American couple, Craig Edward Fraiger and Karly Ray Fraiger.
Brajesh Kumar, programme officer of State Adoption Resource Authority (SARA), a nodal agency of the Union ministry for women and child development, said 17 new specialized adoption agencies would be established in the state in the current financial year. Currently, eight adoption agencies function in the state. Among the 182 children who are staying at the eight orphan homes in the state, 88 are legally free to be adopted.
According to CARA guidelines, the adoption process should ideally complete within two months. However, in many cases it takes three to four years for interested couples to adopt a child due to lengthy court processes. Sources said couples and single parents from different parts of the country and abroad have adopted 36 kids, including 31 girls, from Bihar through SARA in the last six months.