LOST IN CUSTODY

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SITTING in the corner of a dimly lit room, Lakshya is looking down, resolutely, at the floor. Almost two months after he was returned to his biological parents, he is struggling to adapt to a family and life he does not remember.
“As a baby, Lakshya would play peacefully for hours. But now he’s very naughty,” says Babita, 23, who flits between the names Prateek and Lakshya, admitting she quite likes the name the Jindals gave her son; Dinesh, however, will only use Prateek.
When first relocated, Lakshya’s erratic behaviour—throwing pots and pans, shouting, rude comments, fighting with cousins—was frequent, says Babita. “He’s beginning to listen now that I scold and slap him ever so often,” she adds with a grin, “he’s learning more manners here.”
Mood swings still offer Lakshya an outlet for the anger and confusion over his displacement.
Slowly, however, he is adapting. “When he first got here, he was scared to use the toilet,” says Babita.
Provoked into self-defence, Lakshya breaks his silence, quick to interject: “It’s dirty and it smells!” But faced with a traditional Indian toilet, he soon learned to squat; a change of water, leading to looser motions, meant he was forced to learn fast.
Accepting his new family is more difficult. Mummy and Papa, for Lakshya, are still Anil and Vandana Jindal.
Babita, meanwhile, is relegated to ‘Rani mummy’, coined by her cousin to ease his transition home. “It doesn’t bother me. I’m glad my son is loyal,” Babita says wistfully.
But, at the same time, she seems worried about Lakshya. “He talks about the Jindals 24 hours a day. He can’t hear a word against them,” says Babita.
“Sometimes he cries. And once he told me, if we both go back, mummy will look after you too.”
Dinesh loves his son, “or else he wouldn’t have spent so many years fighting for him,” says Babita. But his alcoholism and the occasional violence at home have not escaped Lakshya’s eyes. “I’ll tell her about it,” he threatens his mother, alluding to what he’s seen but can’t understand, before Babita explains for him.
“Sometimes, in some ways, I think it’s better for him to live with the Jindals,” she muses. “But my husband would never allow it. And he’s our only son. I’m so much happier now that we have him. If I had another son, perhaps, I could have given him up.”
Lakshya, however, is clear, when asked where he’d prefer to live. “I want to live with the Jindals,” he says, mumbling something about “Prateek bhaiya” (one of the Jindals’ two other sons). “There I don’t wear ripped clothes,” he says pointing to the tears in his jeans. “And I have more toys. A toy car,” he begins, before drifting, once again, into silence, desperately avoiding eye contact.
Knowing her son has spent four years in opulence can be tough, says Babita, but she’s been trying her best to meet his demands. Yesterday, they ate Chinese food, and today she’s just stocked up on Maggi noodles, another of Lakshya’s favourites.
But without a regular job, Dinesh, a driver, draws only about Rs 7,000 a month. “If we can’t give Lakshya something he asks for, I feel bad,” says Babita.
The Sharmas have started looking at schools for Lakshya where he’ll be enrolled after the summer vacation.
It won’t be a premium private school like he attended in the past-Mother’s Pride or Anil Jindal’s own school, Jindal Public School—but Babita is adamant that neither will it be a government school.
Given his “high-fly” schooling, she is surprised at Lakshya’s dependence on her. “He can’t do anything—I wash him, change his clothes. For that he had servants. But he can’t even write his name! What has he learned during four years with these big people?” she asks.
To this, Lakshya responds: “I’ve forgotten everything.”

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SHOWING off his dance moves to the beats of the latest Bollywood tune, Lakshya seems to be settling, though with difficulty, into his new home. Visibly fond of his Rani mummy, he also enjoys spending time with his grandmother and two-year-old sister Kittu. Dinesh is working longer hours and drinking less. Both parents, says Babita, are recovering from ill health, the stress of fighting for their son.
The Jindals, meanwhile, have not contacted Lakshya since his return home.
“He’s found his real parents now,” said Anil. “I have two other sons. We adopted Lakshya because he was very ill when I saw him at the orphanage.”
Visiting him is out of question, he says, asking, “How will it be for his career? If he sees me it will be difficult for him.”
About life with Lakshya, the Jindals will not speak. “I don’t want to renew the painful time,” he says.
But Sonia Sachdeva, a teacher at Mother’s Pride, shares her memories of Lakshya from West Punjabi Bagh.
“He was a charming and mischievous boy, very curious,” she says, recollecting Anil and Vandana Jindal too at school celebrations and parent-teacher meetings.
“The parents and the child seemed attached to each another. Lakshya was definitely being well looked after. An impressive boy,” she adds.
Walking away from the Sharma’s home, I hear the urgent shuffle of feet and cast back a glance. I stop and watch as Lakshya leaps across the open drain circling his house, skips past the neighbouring plot of land, strewn carelessly with litter, and runs towards me. “Are you going to see the Jindals?” he asks, eagerly, hopefully.
4 Lakshya with his mother Babita
Photographs by Amit mehra; Imaging by raajan)

THE CASE

It was on February 18, 2004 that two-year-old Prateek (later named Lakshya) went missing. His mother Babita, after an argument with her husband Dinesh, had gone to live with her mother, leaving Prateek behind. In an attempt to reconcile the married couple, Dinesh’s sister, Shashi Sharma, took Prateek to Babita. At the house, once Shashi spotted Prateek’s grandmother, she left him at the gate. The grandmother, thinking Prateek had left with the aunt, returned inside. Only 20 days later, when Dinesh and Babita reached a compromise and renewed communication, did they realise their son was not in the care of either parent.

Found roaming alone that same day on Shukra Bazar Road, Matiala, Prateek was picked up by a police officer and taken to Matiala Police Station. The whirlwind speed—42 minutes according to Dinesh’s advocate, D.D. Singhla—with which he was deposited at the Bal Vihar Orphanage Centre in Palam, without adequate checks about the child’s family, has come under attack from the court. The police’s treatment of Dinesh, when he repeatedly inquired about his son’s whereabouts, has also been criticised.

On a visit to the orphanage, Anil Jindal, who provided education, healthcare and one meal a day to its children, spotted Prateek. Within 11 days, Prateek, now called Lakshya, was adopted.

An inquiry into the conduct of the police, the orphanage and the Jindals in what the court views as a highly flawed adoption is underway, the report will be submitted by May 5. In July 2004, when Dinesh first discovered Prateek was in the care of the Jindals, his demands for his son were turned down; Anil Jindal said he could not be sure of Dinesh’s paternity. The Sharmas went to the courts in October 2005.

The Jindals later argued they could provide Lakshya with a better quality of life and opportunities than his biological parents, that he was already mentally and emotionally connected to the family.

But for Singhla, who successfully won custody rights for the Sharmas, this calls for a wider debate. “Should poor and less fortunate families not have the right to retain their children? Is a child’s welfare directly connected to the wealth he grows up with? I also grew up wearing ripped clothes. I studied in a government school, and went to the Panjab University. I turned out okay.”