Children custody row: Norway looks for ‘new solutions’

Norway has expressed its inability to hand over children to their uncle.

Norway today said it was willing to look for “new solutions” in the interest of the two NRI children kept in foster care,a day after it expressed its inability to hand them over to their uncle in the wake of a “conflict” in the family,which has now prepared a fresh custody agreement.

“Although today’s hearing was cancelled,this does not affect the child welfare’s willingness to look for new solutions,” said Thomas Bore Olsen,Communication Adviser in the Municipality of Stavanger,where the children are being kept in foster care.

His remarks follow reports of differences between Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya,parents of three-year-old Abhigyan and one-year-old Aishwarya who were taken away from the couple and put in foster care by Norwegian authorities in May last year on grounds of “emotional disconnect”.

“It’s important to emphasise that we will now seek to clarify the next steps to be taken in this case in dialogue with the lawyer,the private parties and the Stavanger District Court,” Olsen said.

Today’s court hearing,which was to decide whether the children should be handed over to their paternal uncle Arunabhash Bhattacharya,was cancelled after the Norwegian authorities became aware of a conflict in the family resulting in their changing of positions several times.

After a series of flip-flops,the parents and uncle have prepared a new agreement for giving the custody of the children to Arunabash.

They have got it attested by the Indian embassy here,officials said.

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Anurup’s lawyer Svien Kjehl Svendsen said the whole process could take some time and that the agreement had to be accepted by the Child Welfare Service (CWS) of Norway.

The CWS had yesterday issued a statement saying that over the last few days,both the parents and uncle “have changed their position several times on the agreement that had originally been reached.”

“This has caused the CWS to doubt their motives as far as the agreement is concerned,” it had said.

“Even if the parents and the children’s uncle should nevertheless now want to sign an agreement,the CWS does not have sufficient confidence that an agreement would be fulfilled as intended,because the necessary consensus and understanding between the parties and their families does not exist,” the statement had said.

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This means that the children could be caught up in “a very unfortunate tug of war in India,” it had said.

In Kolkata,Sagarika’s father Monotosh Chakraborty alleged Anurup was trying to “blackmail” her and was forcing her to sign documents against her wish. He said all efforts should be made to bring his daughter and her children back to India.