Kolkata: After 28 years, an adopted woman tries to find her roots by tracking a trafficking racket

In the wake of the statewide child trafficking racket that was recently unearthed, a woman who was adopted as a child by a Swedish couple after being abandoned by her biological parents 28 years ago, now wants to find out if the process was legal and without any corruption.

Suya, now known as Julia Gärdefäldt was born on March 19, 1984 to a poor family from the south-western fringes of Kolkata. She contracted tuberculosis when she was four years old and her father, Babu Biswas, who was a mason was unable to pay for her treatment. He left the child at an orphanage Society For Indian Children’s Welfare, Ashirwad, in south Kolkata where she was kept for about two years before a Swedish couple adopted her.

Julia was the third of the four children of her parents. Her mother, Sandhya Biswas, now bedridden with a severe ailment spoke to DNA saying that if possible she would want to meet her daughter. “Her father had kept her at the orphanage by convincing me that she would be taken care of there and given proper medical attention. I had never thought that she would go away to a far away country. If she returns now, we would like to find out who was responsible for her adoption and whether it was done legally or not, given all the scams which are being unearthed now,” she said. After her husband's death, Sandhya now lives with her brother Sahadeb Bor. Her son and Julia’s brother Raju Biswas and his family too live with her. The two other daughters have been married off.

Julia, on the other hand, also spoke to DNA from Sweden and said that she was interested in returning and finding out the facts of her adoption. “Along with the legal aspect of my adoption, I would also want to meet my biological parents and family who had abandoned me owing to an ailment,” she said.

Julia was taken to Lyseki, a small town on the Swedish West Coast and later in Örebro, initially in 1990. “I don’t want to name my adoptive parents because they soon got estranged. I have grown up with the feeling that no one wants me because I had been abandoned thrice – Once by my biological father, once by my adoptive father and the third time by the person who I had fallen in love with and had borne a child with in 2010,” she said. Julia at the moment lives with her daughter in Antonia.  

Sandhya had, with the help of an NGO, earlier spoken to Julia via video conference but could not talk much owing to the language barrier. “She is unable to speak in Hindi or Bengali and I could not speak or understand English. There was an interpreter who had helped us,” Sandhya said.