Mumbai: A sessions court has refused to discharge a woman who runs an NGO from a child trafficking and illegal adoption prosecution, holding that the material in the chargesheet prima facie shows her direct role in taking a newborn from the biological mother, handing the child over for adoption, and receiving Rs 3.5 lakh through alleged trafficking.Additional sessions judge Ajit A Yadav observed that the court can’t go into minute details of the evidence at this stage but were the proof not to be challenged, it would be sufficient to secure the conviction of the woman, Julia Fernandes, who runs Aahan Foundation.The prosecution case began with a police complaint based on a tipoff that a woman had sold a newborn. According to the prosecution, the information indicated that the woman had been involved in the sale of another baby earlier. The case was initially registered against unknown persons.The prosecution alleged that Fernandes, acting with other accused, trafficked and sold the children of a couple and helped prepare false records. The court noted that the specific allegation in this case was that a newborn was trafficked and sold to a witness for Rs 3.5 lakh.Fernandes is accused of acting as part of a coordinated group involved in the trafficking and illegal sale or procurement of a minor, facilitating the operation through severe documentary fraud. To execute and conceal their shared criminal enterprise, the group allegedly manufactured fake official records—such as court or public registers—with the specific purpose of cheating, and actively presented these forged documents to authorities as genuine.Fernandes’s lawyer argued that she was not named in the first information report, was not initially shown as a wanted accused, and that even before the magistrate, the name had not surfaced. According to the defence, the mother had said she did not know the woman who had taken her child. It argued that Fernandes works in the adoption field and had been falsely implicated without any active role or corroborative material.The investigating officer and the prosecution opposed discharge, saying Fernandes had been mentioned in the earlier chargesheet as a wanted accused and that a supplementary chargesheet was filed after the arrest. The prosecution relied on the statements of witnesses, bank records showing money transactions between accused persons, and other material collected during the probe.The court observed that in the earlier chargesheet, a witness had mentioned the accused by her first name and had “described her role in clear words”. It also relied on the statement of another witness, who, according to the prosecution, had received the child and had accused Fernandes of deceiving her with the claim that the child was being given for adoption legally.
