Mother Sagarika Bhattacharya said, "I do not want to comment. The uncle will get the children because I have agreed to it. The children will be coming to India."
Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya's lawyer Svein Kjetil Svendsen said that the agreement between the parents will be presented to the Child Welfare Service. "The important thing is to clarify with the Child Welfare Service if this agreement is accepted and that they believe that the parents and the uncle really want this agreement which they have signed. At this time it's very uncertain when the children will come back to India."
The renewed pact offers a way out of the impasse the custody case had reached after marital problems between the parents became public and the Norwegian authorities refused to hand over the two NRI children on grounds that there were no credible guardians for them.
Abhigyan, 3, and Aishwarya, 1, children of the couple living in Norway's Stavanger, were taken under protective care by Barnevarne (Norwegian Child Welfare Services) last May on the ground that they were not looked after properly by their parents.
Over a month ago, India and Norway had struck an agreement under which the parents named Anurup's brother Arunabhash Bhattacharya as the primary caretaker of the two children.
The re-nomination of the uncle as local guardian came after some reports that he had backed out of the agreement amid speculation that parents were planning to separate.
The parents' marital problems and the disclosure about the mother's unstable mental condition had embarrassed the government which has invested much diplomatic capital in pressuring the Norwegian authorities to help children return to India in the care of their extended family.
If the pact is accepted by the Norwegian court as sufficient guarantee for handing over the children, it will be a major boost to the government which has faced some criticism for intervening in the case without cross-checking the facts.
Posted in: Life
0 comments:
Post a Comment