JUDGMENT - Lent in B. J.:-Is this Court to be the clearing house for the export of Indian children transported by devious means to this State from other States for the avowed purpose of being handed over in foreign adoption ? That, bluntly put, is virtually the common question I must answer in these petitions. I do so by this common judgment.

2. The ages of the minors offered for foreign adoption in these petitions range from 6 months to 8 years, five of them being under one year. All these children are born and are said to be abandoned in States other than the State of Maharashtra and were left in the care of institutions in these States, to wit,Karnataka, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, except in Miscellaneous Petition No. 86 of 1982 where the minor is said to havebeen handed over at Andhra Pradesh to one Sister Mary Ella Stewart during her short visit to that State. Soon thereafter these institutions transferred these children ostensibly to certain institutions in Maharashtra, to wit, Norwegian Free Evangelical Mission at Jalgaon, Ishaprema Neketan at Poona and Vimala Dermatological Centre, Catholic Nurses Guild and Missionaries of Charity at Bombay. The minor in Misc Petition No. 86

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