Word: stolen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...says. It would be seven years before she learned the truth. Zabeen had been snatched by a gang of criminals who hunted pretty children in the poorest parts of southern India and spirited them away, giving them new identities before dispatching them to adoptive parents in the West. Stolen from a mother's arms while they slept on the pavement, kidnapped as they played, or taken from gullible parents who thought they were being sent to boarding school, the children were processed through an adoption agency and orphanage known as Malaysian Social Services, at Tiruverkadu in Chennai's northwest...
...identity Police say Zabeen was given a new name and biography and, together with a purported sibling, adopted to an Australian couple through the Queensland Department of Families, Youth and Community Care. The sibling is also listed as stolen, from a different family. Queensland's Child Safety Minister Margaret Keech says the allegations are "very concerning," and promises that Adoption Services Queensland "will work very closely with federal and state agencies to investigate these claims." MSS documents sighted by TIME reveal that Zabeen was one of 13 children sent to Australia by the agency; it may also have passed stolen...
...Alarm bells Authorities had another warning in 1999, when MSS' licence was suspended after one of its staff was arrested for handling four babies stolen from a hospital. He passed the children to another adoption agency, Madras Social Service Guild, known as MASOS, which has also sent children to Australia. Charges against the agencies were dropped, since it could not be proved they knew the children were stolen; both had their licenses restored...
...director Ravindranath died in 2006, but his wife Vatsala, who was the organization's president, last week denied all charges, saying MSS had no idea the children were stolen. "I'm not handling the surrender. I don't remember it," says the grandmother, who must report daily to police in Chennai as part of her bail conditions. "I trusted [my staff] because I asked them, If there is anything, please tell me. They are promising on the heads of their children...
DIED After he was elected in 2001, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa made it his first order of business to investigate corruption in his predecessor's administration, eventually revealing that former President Frederick Chiluba had stolen some $41 million from the state during his rule. Mwanawasa thereafter became known as a politician who was never afraid to challenge corruption and greed. He was one of the first African leaders to speak out against the Zimbabwean despot Robert Mugabe, lamenting the plight of the neighboring country as a "catastrophe." Two months after suffering a debilitating stroke, he died in Paris...