Gammy, a baby born with Down's Syndrome, is held by his surrogate mother
(IN PHOTO) Gammy, a baby born with Down's Syndrome, is held by his surrogate mother Pattaramon Janbua at a hospital in Chonburi province August 3, 2014. According to Pattaramon, his Australian parents, through a local surrogate agency, asked her at her 7th month of pregnancy to terminate it because of his Down's Syndrome but she refused and kept the baby. The Australian parents instead took with them Gammy's twin sister who was born healthy. More than 3 million Thai baht ($93,360) was raised through an online campaign in Thailand in less than a day for the medical treatment of Gammy who suffers from potentially life threatening heart conditions and a serious lung infection, local media reported. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Australian parents, who had their twins born to an Indian surrogate mother, allegedly refused to bring two children back home. The Australian High Commission in New Delhi apparently had prior knowledge of the incident.

The allegation against the Australian couple caused enough controversy to consider holding a national inquiry. Federal Attorney-General George Brandis has started considering the possibility of holding the inquiry into commercial surrogacy. Diana Bryant, the Chief Justice of the Family Court, said that the alleged incident had revealed why there should be a national inquiry on the issue. ABC News conducted an investigation with Foreign Correspondent that apparently unmasked the involvement of a set of twins born to a surrogated mother in India. The entire procedure was allegedly conducted by a surrogacy agency. It was also revealed that the Australian parents preferred not to have both the children. It was the gender of the baby that apparently was responsible for the Australian parents to take such a decision.

Bryant said that, according to consular officers, Australia pressurised to provide visa for only one baby, which was a result of the couple deciding not to take both babies with them Down Under. According to Bryant, the consular officers were deeply traumatised about the case that had taken place in 2012. They apparently told Bryant that the surrogate mother had given birth to a boy and a girl. The couple selected one of them and decided against selecting the other.

When the officers tried to buy time by delaying the visa process so that they could persuade and negotiate with the Australian couple to take both the babies home, "someone" from Australia pressurised them to issue visa for only one child. "I asked them what happened to the other child. They said someone in the end had come forward -- and they said they were known to the family -- and took the child," Bryant told ABC, "but they expressed to me their great concern that in fact money had changed hands." Bryant said that using money to convince a family to take the abandoned child, as happened in this case, was equal to human trafficking as well as a criminal offence.

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au