LONDON: An Indian family living in Oxford is fighting to get their five-and-a-half-year-old son back from foster care after he was taken away by British social service officials on suspicion that he was being "sexually abused and improperly touched" by his father.
In a bizarre turn of events, teachers from Bayards Hill Primary School here called police and social service officials on March 6 after Achintya, a class I student, told them that his father "is a bad man" who does "dirty things". According to his parents, Rajat Puri and Shruti Beri, who've been living in Oxford's Rosehill area since 2009, the school interpreted the comment as "a case of sexual molestation".
An appalled Shruti, who runs a textile business, said the "bad habit" that their five-year-old son referred to was her husband's social drinking, which she would describe as his "bad habit".
"Rajat is a social drinker and when he would have a drink or a smoke over the weekend, Achintya would want to do the same. I would then tell him that what his dad was doing was bad. Somehow Achintya, when asked in school about his father, ended up saying his dad does bad things," Shruti said.
"Our child was taken away from us on March 6 and given to foster care. The last time I met him, he had bruises on his back and face, and was terrified... he was being kept in a dark room and was scared. A health assessment on March 25 showed the bruises. We reached out to our area MP and chief of social services, but no one got back," the mother claimed.
Worse, the couple are not being allowed to meet Achintya. The officials have also unsuccessfully coaxed them into signing that "we'd never meet our son, give him toys and write notes to him," Shruti said. The couple, originally from Punjab, moved to UK after living in Johannesburg for five years.
The parents have written to British Prime Minister David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg on the issue, but haven't heard from them. "We just want our son back. This is a case of racial discrimination," Shruti said. She also alleged being threatened by the Oxfordshire County Council officials to give up their son. "The day social services officials interviewed me, they called me a bloody Asian," she alleged.
A recent emergency protection order given by Bambury Family Court allows the couple to see their son thrice a week for an hour each. However, until now, only Shruti has been able to meet Achintya outside the Knights Court premises. She recalled her interview with the social service officials on March 7.
"Both of us were first called by the police for a voluntary statement at 1pm on March 7. Suddenly I got a call from social service asking me to visit them at 1.30pm. They smartly divided my husband and me. The police told my husband that I had confirmed that he sexually abused his son. On the other hand, the social services officials told me that my husband had admitted to sexually molesting Achintya and had been arrested. I said this could never be the case. An hour later they retracted, saying he wasn't arrested."
....and I have seen several housing societies in India that give house on rent only to foreigners as they cannot take over ownership of the house.
