A small private jet carrying the one-year-old Malawian boy pop star Madonna hopes to adopt took off from the southern African country on Monday, a witness said.
The child, David Banda, was accompanied by one of Madonna's bodyguards on his flight out of his native Malawi and is believed to be en route to Johannesburg.
Madonna visiting children during her trip to Malawi last week
Human rights groups had planned to file an application on Monday asking the court to block the adoption.
Malawian law prohibits adoptions by non-residents, but officials are granting an exemption or waiver to Madonna, who has confirmed her intention to adopt the child who lives in a dilapidated orphanage near the Zambian border.
Today's events came less than a week after Malawi's High Court granted the entertainer and her filmmaker husband Guy Ritchie an interim order allowing them to take custody of the child.
The couple, who arrived in Malawi on October 4th on what was described as a humanitarian trip, left last Friday without boy, who did not have a passport.
Eye of the Child, the leading child advocacy group in Malawi, said on Saturday the request for an injunction would be filed in a magistrate's court in the capital Lilongwe on behalf of about five dozen non-governmental organisations.
"They (government) haven't followed the law. What has happened is a shortcut," said Boniface Mandere, a spokesman for Eye of the Child, which is among the groups seeking the injunction.
Madonna spent most of her time in Malawi visiting orphanages and meeting charity workers as part of a campaign to publicise the plight of some 900,000 orphans in this nation of 13 million people, where AIDS has destroyed many families.
She has pledged to donate about $3 million to the campaign to help these children, many of whom are infected with HIV.