Post Norway, kids' custody row now starts at home

Kolkata: Amid the renewed fight over the custody of two children of an Indian NRI couple in Norway even after their return to India, the country’s embassy in Delhi has said they consider the issue closed. In reply to a e-mail by city-based NGO India’s Smile, counsellor of the Royal Norwegian embassy in Delhi Laila Tronsdal Moen said, “The Royal Norwegian Embassy in Delhi considers the issue as closed from our side.”[caption id=“attachment_324037” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Another custody battle. AP”]  [/caption] “The embassy is confident that the Indian authorities will resolve the issue in the best interest of all concerned,” the counsellor said in the communique to Rajeev Sarkar, secretary Trustee of the NGO, which claimed to have first brought to light the issue. Abhigyan and Aishwarya, who were brought to Kulti in West Bengal’s Burdwan district from Norway recently after a protracted legal battle and diplomatic pressure by India, were again in the mid of a row with their mother and paternal grandfather lodging complaints against each other with the police. Demanding security, Ajay Bhattacharya, the paternal grandfather of the children, has lodged an FIR with the Kulti police station alleging that the kids’ mother Sagarika Bhattacharya barged into their house with outsiders and demanded handing over of the children to her. Sagarika had earlier lodged an FIR against Ajay at the same police station alleging he was preventing her from meeting the children. Sagarika said she last met her children on 25 April at a relative’s house at Sinthe in the suburbs of Kolkata. Assistant commissioner of Durgapur-Asansol Police Commissionerate Anjali Ahuja said, “We have received complaints from both sides. As it is a family matter we are trying to talk to both and asking them to solve the matter amicably.” The children were taken away from their parents, Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya, by Norway’s Child Welfare Service in May last year on grounds of “emotional disconnect”. Following a nearly six-month-old legal battle, a negotiation was reached between the Indian and the Norwegian authorities to keep the two children in foster care before being flown to India. The two children arrived in Delhi on 24 April after a Norwegian court gave their custody to their uncle Arunabhas Bhattacharya, a resident of Kulti in Burdwan district. PTI