Norway may give Indian kids’ custody to uncle

Norway’s child welfare service said on Tuesday that two NRI children taken into its care will be handed over to their uncle pending a court ruling, even as a special Indian envoy held talks with Norwegian authorities on the issue. Grandparents protest

Norway’s child welfare service said on Tuesday that two NRI children taken into its care will be handed over to their uncle pending a court ruling, even as a special Indian envoy held talks with Norwegian authorities on the issue.

“It has been concluded that care of the two children should be awarded to the brother of the children’s father, enabling him to take the children back to India,” Norway’s thelocal.no website quoted the child welfare service in Stavanger city as saying.

The grandparents of the children, who are on a four-day protest in New Delhi since Monday demanding their custody be given to their family, expressed happiness over the decision.

Earlier in the day, external affairs minister SM Krishna assured the grandparents that the two children — three-year-old Abhigyan and one-year-old Aishwarya — of Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya, an NRI couple living in Stavanger, will be brought back home to India “at any cost”.

Reacting to Norway’s latest decision, the children’s grandfather Monotosh Chakraborthy said the family was “happy” over the developments. “All we want is for the children to come back home to their family soon,” Chakraborthy said.

The children were taken under protective care last May on the grounds that they were not being looked after properly.

With inputs from IANS