NRI couple Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya who are at the center of an unprecedented diplomatic drama surrounding custody of their kids, had received “family guidance” for “nearly six months” before the Norwegian authorities felt the condition of the kids was “an emergency situation” that warranted state custody.
Head of Norway’s Childrens Services, Gunnar Torsen, in an exclusive e-mail interview to DNA, has sought to clear the air surrounding the circumstances that forced the Norwegian authorities to take the custody of the two kids.
Toresen has indicated the custody incident was not a sudden one and followed months of counselling measures by Norway authorities in order to avoid a custody situation. “The family (the Bhattacharya couple) received family guidance over a period of nearly six months before the situation that led to the removal of the children, occurred,” Toresen wrote to DNA.
The final decision he said was taken by the Norwegian court. “Later the court decided that the ‘conditions for a care order were met without doubt.’ Under Norwegian law that means that the ‘health and development for the children were at risk.’”
Dismissing reports attributed to parents that ‘the children being fed by hand’ and ‘sleeping in the same bed’ were the reasons for them being taken into custody, the Child Services chief said the two kids, Abhigyan and Aishwarya, were suffering from “emotional detachment disorder.”
“Emotional detachment disorder means that the relations between a child and the care person lacks fundamental emotional quality, resulting in emotional disturbance by the child so that the ability to establish relations with other people and undergo normal psychological development is damaged or severely injured,” he said.
