Happy ending for family: Negar returns to her blind parents’ embrace

TEHRAN,May 17(MNA) - The court ruled in the favor of Negar’s family on Sunday to have their daughter returned to the family after 8 months of living in an orphanage. The family’s lawyer, Hossein Ahmadi Niaz said the judge decided to release Negar to her parents on a two-week trial under the supervision of social workers. Ahmadi Niaz said his law firm will meet the costs of keeping Negar at home for the duration of her temporary stay. Negar’s story began when her father, Nader Soleimani, blind by birth, married a blind woman 11 years ago and after 10 years God blessed them with a child. Unfortunately a disaster falls on the family. While his expecting wife was crossing the street, she drops into an uncovered sewage canal and upon rescue she goes into early labor three weeks sooner than expected. Since the family couldn’t afford the hospital bill, two charities paid for Negar’s mother hospital birth cost, although with two days past due date. Apparently that was more than the hospital could take and in an illogical, abrupt and vicious decision, they gave away the new born infant to the Ameneh Oraphange in Tehran. When the parents requested the orphanage for the return of their baby, the children’s home refuses to let their baby out. Desperate and heartbroken, the parents don’t sit praying for the return of their daughter but take action by raising their voice and publicizing their case by calling the IRNA news agency. The case took enough publicity that a lawyer out of goodwill took the case without charging the family and defended them in the court. Normally, the family lawyer argued, infants are left in the hand of the children’s home when they have either no parent(s) or have bad parents whose parental rights are terminated; however in this case Negar had her own parents capable of raising her although they were blind. Besides, Ahmadi Niaz said, no laws have been ratified to take away an infant from his/her blind parent(s).