No easy passport for rape survivor’s kid

KOZHIKODE: It is not easy for  a rape victim, who has given birth to a child, to travel to another country along with her child.  She has to get an affidavit approved from a judicial magistrate’s  court confirming that the child was born out of rape  and get a passport in her child’s name without the biological father’s name.

This is an area where a rape victim has to live through the most painful incident in her life as she has to prove in the court that she was raped,  impregnated and had been delivered of a child.

For this, she will have to get a police FIR, if there is one, and also the medical reports to be presented before the magistrate’s court and then get an affidavit endorsed from the court that her child can be given a passport without its biological father’s name.

The burden of proving the rape and fatherhood of the child is on the rape victim and the system hardly gives her any support. “There is no other  provision to issue a passport to a child without the name of the biological father.

Once the court endorses the affidavit, we can issue a passport in the child’s name, leaving the father’s name column blank,” Kozhikode passport officer K.P. Madhusoodanan told Deccan Chronicle.

The passport rules also make it mandatory for the inclusion of the father’s name in the child’s passport in case of unwed mothers (excluding rape victims). A woman bearing a child out of wedlock also has to get an endorsement from the court on a joint affidavit filed by the child’s biological parents. In this case, young mothers, who were once cheated and impregnated, cannot go overseas with their children as most of their estranged partners do not offer to file a joint affidavit.

“In this case, we have no other go but to get a joint affidavit from both the biological parents.  The passport of the child will have the name of both the mother and the father. Except for children of proven rape victims, the father’s name column cannot be left blank in the passport,” Mr  Madhusoodanan added.

Sources told DC that because of these provisions in the passport rules,  there were  several cases of such mothers continuing to fight the social stigma and forced to live here, even when they get a chance to migrate or travel abroad for jobs with their children.