Even as legal proceedings to reunite 14-day-old Manji Yamada with her father Dr Ikufumi Yamada continue, the infant’s grandmother, Emiko, her sole relative in the Jaipur hospital where she now resides, wrote to the Japanese Embassy in New Delhi to issue a visa and travel documents for Manji’s trip back to Japan. Incidentally, Japan, like India, has no law to regulate surrogacy.

Meanwhile, the Yamada family’s counsel has issued a legal notice to the Anand Municipality in Gujarat for the baby’s birth certificate, and has also written to the Indian Ministry for Women and Child Development to issue Manji a birth certificate and travel documents. The family has also decided to move the Supreme Court if the birth certificate and travel documents are not issued within three days, confirmed Kavita Srivastava of the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) in Jaipur.

Kamal Vijaywarghia, one of the Yamada family’s contacts in India said: “Without the birth certificate, nothing is possible. So, we will first wait for that.”

Adding that he has been in regular contact with the baby’s distraught father in Japan, Vijaywarghia said, “I just spoke to him on Friday afternoon and he expressed his anxiety about the entire process. He is also trying to understand the legal scenario from the Japanese point of view,” he added.