By DPA
Copenhagen : Adoption of children from India to Denmark has been temporarily halted to ensure that all safeguards are met, Danish Family Minister Carina Christensen said Monday.
The minister's decision was announced a day after a Danish television documentary alleged that some children adopted from India may have been victims of kidnapping or trafficking.
An Indian father, identified as Ramesh Kulkarni, interviewed in a documentary screened Sunday by public broadcaster DR said that he had sent his children to a children's home when his wife died.
When he wanted to collect them, he was informed they had been adopted by someone in Denmark, the documentary said.
The documentary mentioned adoption agency AC International Child support, Denmark, as having organised the adoptions.
"We have no knowledge of children adopted illegally from India," Jorgen-Ulrich Raunskov of the agency said.
On Monday, the agency's chairman Anders Christen said the agency had not had any dealings with the three orphanages named in the documentary for many years due to "unsatisfactory ethics, morals and economy".
The agency said it had organised 93 adoptions from India over "many years".
Christensen said Danish authorities did not plan to investigate any adoptions unless they were contacted by Indian authorities.
"Nothing suggests that any mistakes were made in Denmark. It would be unreasonable to subject the adopted families to the worry and uncertainty a probe would create," the minister said.
Christensen also said she had ordered an audit of AC International Child support in Denmark.