Bangladesh launches investigation into children ‘wrongly’ adopted overseas

Photographs of families and children in Dhaka, Bangladesh, taken between 1972 and 1977 by the British doctor Jack Preger, 93, who compiled a list of mothers who said their children had been taken away. Photograph: Joshua Bright/The Guardian

Police in Bangladesh have launched an investigation into historical allegations that children were adopted abroad without their parents’ consent, after a Guardian investigation into adoptions to the Netherlands in the 1970s.

Bangladesh special branch in Dhaka confirmed it had opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the adoption of a number of children between 1976 and 1979.