NEW DELHI (AP) - A baby girl born of an Indian surrogate mother has left to join her Japanese biological father after spending the first months of her life caught up in bureaucratic delays that kept her from leaving India, a family friend said Sunday.

The 3-month-old Manji and her Japanese grandmother, Emiko Yamada, left for Osaka, Japan, on Saturday night, said Kamal Vijayvargia, a friend of the baby's father.

Commercial surrogacy has been legal in India since 2002, but complications over Manji's adoption prevented her Japanese family from bringing the infant home after she was born on July 25. Yamada, who has been taking care of Manji since her birth, took the case all the way to India's Supreme Court.

Following the court's order in September to issue the child a temporary travel document, Manji received a visa from Japan's embassy last week.

"Amid the happiness I am feeling in going back, I have forgotten all the hurdles and everything. I'm just happy about going back," the 70-year-old grandmother told reporters hours before boarding the flight to Japan.

"The happiest moment will be when the baby sees her father," the grandmother said.

Manji's saga has exposed the pitfalls of international commercial surrogacy - or what has been called "wombs for rent" - in which surrogate mothers are impregnated in vitro with the egg and sperm of couples who are unable to conceive on their own.

Manji's father, Ikufumi Yamada, 48, and his then-wife Yuki, 45, came to India in 2007 in search of a surrogate mother. They signed an agreement with an Indian woman who was impregnated with an egg from a donor, fertilized by sperm from Ikufumi Yamada.

According to Indian law, the couple must legally adopt the baby after birth before taking it home.

But the Yamadas divorced shortly before the birth, and Yamada's ex-wife said she did not want the baby. After the birth, Yamada was told that even though he was the child's biological father, he could not take her back to Japan because India does not allow single men to adopt.

Without the adoption papers, the baby was unable to obtain travel documents until the Supreme Court's order ruled the child had a right to travel documents.

Commercial surrogacy is growing in India, where it is considerably cheaper than in Western countries. While there are no reliable numbers for such pregnancies nationwide, doctors work with surrogates in virtually every major Indian city.

Surrogate mothers, often poor women with little education, earn between $4,500 and $5,000, plus all medical costs, for the service.

Most couples end up paying the surrogacy clinic about $10,000 for the entire procedure, including fertilization, the fee to the mother and medical expenses.