New Delhi, Sept. 20 -- The Supreme Court has ordered the handover of a two-year-old boy to his adoptive parents in Telangana, holding that a biological mother's financial constraints in giving up her child cannot, by themselves, lead to a presumption of child sale, while clarifying that its order does not affect investigations into an alleged inter-state trafficking racket involving other children.

The two-year-old boy's mother, a single parent, gave the child to a married couple soon after his birth in April 2024. The couple cared for the child, vaccinated him regularly, celebrated his first birthday, and enrolled him in the Aadhaar database. However, the state's Child Welfare Committee (CWC) forcibly took the child away in February 202...