It’s a story of pathos that involves two siblings separated by oceans, fractious parents and complicated visa laws. Ten-year-old Vedant and his five-year-old sibling Medhavi, born to an Indian origin American citizen, have never met.
They only speak to each other on Skype and have never done the ordinary things brothers and sisters do—play, quarrel, hug or have adventures together.
Every March, Medhavi ties a rakhi on Vedant and showers kisses on him—all through Skype. Vedant lives in Houston, Texas while Medhavi, thousands of miles away in Vadodara, Gujarat. Their only fault is to be born as In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) babies, which has placed them in legal limbo, and at risk of becoming stateless.
Vedant, who was born in June 2004 in an IVF clinic in Hyderabad through his father’s biological sperm, the help of an anonymous egg donor and a surrogate womb now stands to lose his Indian passport on March 5, 2014. His father Maulik Modi, a software engineer was an NRI when the boy was born. He says his wife and in-laws forged little Vedant’s birth certificate the same year, showing him to be the biological son in order to avoid social stigma.
Subsequently, an IVF baby Medhavi, was born to the Modis in September 2009. In July 2009, Mrs Modi filed for divorce in a US court without mentioning Medhavi’s IVF status in India. The wife (name withheld) dragged Maulik to court, seeking Vedant’s custody. In November 2009, the court restrained Vedant from travelling out of the US.
The Modis’ divorce came through in May 2010. However, Mrs Modi had made no mention of Medhavi as her daughter in the divorce petition, making her legally invisible in America. Subsequently in June 2010, Maulik was granted US citizenship. But he did not apply for US citizenship for Vedant, who lived with his mother.
According to American law, as a US citizen, Maulik cannot apply for the renewal of his son’s Indian passport, which expires in March, but can sponsor him for US citizenship being his father. But there is a catch. Even if Vedant becomes an American citizen, the father cannot bring his son to India due to a restraining order his wife had got from the US court. Moreover, Maulik cannot apply for an Indian passport for Medhavi since he is a US citizen. He also cannot obtain a US passport for her because at the time of her birth, he was not a US citizen.
As required by the US laws says Maulik despairingly, “I can get my IVF son a US passport as per law, but a court order prevents me from taking him outside the US. So, I cannot get him to come to India to meet his sister. My ex-wife cannot get a US passport for my son as per law, since she has no genetic link to my son.”
The bewildered father cited similar IVF cases, since only biological parents can seek an American citizenship for their offspring after they immigrate. The US government would not, hence give Medhavi a US passport even though Maulik is genetically her father. As a result, she cannot leave India and go to the US to meet her brother.
“As a result, my innocent IVF son and daughter are caught in a Catch-22 situation and remain landlocked. I’m left with only two choices—either abandon my IVF daughter in India and stay in the US with my son or give him up in the US and raise my IVF daughter in India,” a distraught Maulik told The Sunday Standard.
He quit his job with a blue chip company and chose to return home in August 2010 to raise Medhavi instead of abandoning her to the uncertain mercies of an orphanage.
“I was left with a terrible choice, one that no parent should ever be put in. Why and what crimes did my kids commit for being punished?”
IVF children have been made “legally invisible” because fertility laws of both the US and India are inadequate. The existing Indian law, Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, only regulates IVF industry and not the rights of IVF children. It suffers from serious lacunae and shortcomings including recording the parentage of the surrogate child and the process of determination of nationality rights.
The US law on surrogacy is also full of contradictions. It says both parents should be US citizens, and if their child is born outside the country, they must establish their genetic link with the child. In Maulik’s case, the daughter was born before he became a US citizen, and hence cannot get an Indian passport for her nor a US one, leaving her stateless.
Maulik has been pleading with the US embassy in Delhi for the past three years to grant his daughter US citizenship and a valid visa to meet her brother. On all occasions his plea was rejected. Ironically the visa counsellor at the American mission is Joyce Haley, who had facilitated the “evacuation” of Devyani Khobragade’s domestic help by granting her a visa in undue haste. Maulik’s plea to the US embassy to at least allow his son to travel to India to see his sister by challenging and setting aside the US court order in favour of an US citizen went unheard.
The Baby Manji case brought surrogacy to the forefront of Indian debate in 2008. A Japanese doctor couple used a gestational surrogate with a donor egg, but then divorced before the baby was born in Anand, Gujarat. The wife (who was not genetically related to the baby) didn’t want the baby, but the father (who was genetically related to the baby) did.
However, at the time, Japanese laws didn’t recognize surrogacy and Indian laws wouldn’t allow a single man to adopt a baby. The story ended well—Baby Manji did get a Japanese visa, but not before the father was accused of child trafficking by Indian NGOs.
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