Madonna has been forced to leave Malawi without the son she chose to adopt a few weeks ago. The child’s father has claimed him back, despite the fact that the child was in the care of an orphanage.

The boys mother last year and the child was placed into care, the father alleges that this was a temporary step. He said that he always planned to bring the child home after his circumstances improved.

Yohane Banda speaking to a British newspaper said that he feared the boy, David would die of malaria a disease which had killed his other two children.

“I suppose deep in my heart I always imagined that when he was better, or I had got another wife, I would go and take him back,” Banda told the Mail on Sunday. “I did not think anyone would want to take him away.”

But Banda, 31, said he and his family had agreed to allow Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie to adopt the child, he had thought that this would give him the chance to receive a good education and grow up healthy and strong.

“He will always be in my heart. I hate to see him leave Malawi but I have come to accept the loss,” Banda said. “The government people told me it would be a good thing for the country. He will come back educated and able to help us.”

Until recently, Banda said he had no idea the woman seeking to adopt his one-year-old son was a celebrity, all he knew was that she was a “nice Christian lady”.

When he met her in court he “could tell from her eyes that she was a good lady”. Whilst he appears to be reconciled to the child’s loss others are not so sanguine.

Malawi’s High Court granted Madonna and her husband an interim order allowing them to take custody of the boy last week but the adoption plan has sparked a furious outcry in Malawi, where only Malawi Nationals can adopt Malawi children.

However because of the high profile of the case the Malawi local officials granted an exeption in this case. Human rights groups are checking the legal validity of that extension, they want the decision overturned.

Eye of the Child, the leading child group in Malawi, said the request would be filed in a magistrate’s court in the capital Lilongwe on behalf of about five dozen non governmental organisations who want the adoption to be stopped.