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Baby Ariha In German custody case: Mother Dhara pens open letter to Indian PM Modi

New DelhiWritten By: Dhara ShahUpdated: Jun 30, 2023, 01:49 PM IST
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Dhara and Bhavesh, the parents have been fighting a legal battle in Germany for the custody of their child, Ariha Shah, who is now over two years old. Photograph:(Others)

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WION EXCLUSIVE
With the Baby Ariha case grabbing headlines over the past few months after a German court refused to give her back to her parents on grounds of parental neglect and after a wait of more than two years, her mother Dhara Shah pens this open letter to PM Modi and Indians the world over.

MY LETTER:

When they took our child away, our life just…changed. Can you imagine that a child who was still at her mother’s breast was snatched away from her? Can you imagine the amount of mental agony that a mother or any mother in a situation like this, must have gone through? There was no permission to give her my milk. I used to wake up at night thinking of Ariha being hungry. 

They said when they took her away…that Ariha was very stubborn. She used to keep crying for hours until she learnt how to keep quiet herself. Can any parent imagine such a situation? It’s a nightmare.
We Indians are such an emotional race that if we see a crying child on the road, we will ask why is that child crying and tell the caretaker to give him/her what they want so that the child stops crying. We care for each person, especially children.

Ariha was 7 months old at that time when the German authorities snatched her away she was still being breastfed and it was her primary food, so you can imagine how agonising this whole thing was for me, my husband, and our family. My child must be wondering silently: why did you abandon me, mumma? What answer will I give her?

The child welfare authorities in Germany who took her away, the court -- for all of them, it’s a job they are doing. How can they look after my child who needs emotional sustenance? There can be no comparison with a family. 

In these dark moments, the only thing that gives us hope is Ariha’s silent wish to be together with us again. Because during our visitations she kept saying: Mumma come with me or I want to go with Mumma Papa.
We are very much worried about what her future will be like, in a foreign country?

As I was dealing with all of this and our family was heartbroken, so many things happened to break our resolve. The authorities in Germany kept saying the mother’s mental state is not good as she keeps crying so I stopped crying. Now they say that the mother doesn’t cry so she is emotionless. There is a twist to everything. And nothing we do seems right to them.

They say they have the best interests of our child at heart but in this inhuman system, how can they say they care? In front of our child, whenever we would meet her, we would laugh with her and be cheerful so that she doesn’t pick up on the vibes about how we are actually feeling. But then when she would go away after our visiting hours were over, our hearts would break and we couldn’t stop our tears. 

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They want to keep her in the care of a German family and they feel that we have neglected her. I ask you, how can anybody who has seen us with Ariha say that. Everybody has seen her videos too and if a child is not bonded with her parents, how can that child laugh and play and be happy? 

When our visa expired this month, in June, we had requested to please let her come to India and be in the supervision of child welfare services, if they didn’t trust us. Instead, they said to inform them when we are leaving so that our child can say goodbye to us! This was even before the court order so it was like they knew what the order was going to be like, even before we were intimated.

We love you Ariha and we will never tire of saying this. 

We are worried about her, We have not hurt her and we will fight for her.

I know Ariha’s case has been widely covered in the media and most people are familiar with the details but I would still like to put it all forward here again on this platform.

Ariha had suffered an external perineal injury in September 2021 after which we had gone to the doctor. Two sets of doctors: her regular paediatrician and in the hospital, almost 4 to 5 doctors including the surgeon checked Ariha and said there was nothing to worry about as it seemed like hormonal bleeding. Then we came back home. After 5 days when we went for a follow-up checkup, the doctor said Ariha has an injury and called Child Services and reported the matter. 

They took Ariha from the hospital when we were talking to doctors and later we came to know that they were suspecting us of sexual abuse of our own child! We were shocked because we had brought her to the doctor and hospital ourselves. If there was anything to hide, why would we do that? 

Much later, in December 2021 that year, the same hospital ruled out sexual abuse, after many examinations and we were relieved. We also voluntarily gave our DNA for tests. In February 2022, the police closed the case of sexual abuse of the child without any charges. But the German Child Services – Jugendamt continued their case for terminating our parental rights.

As the days flew and the case progressed, the family court said that there will be a psychological assessment for us (Parental Ability Report). It took almost a year for a court-appointed expert who hardly talked to us for only a maximum of 12 hours, to write her report that came in December 2022. It was mostly written about the differences between Indian culture and Western culture, but an important thing was that it agreed that parents are very important in a child’s life. And the court-appointed expert recommended that the baby should stay with her parents in a parent-child facility. That gave us hope.

The court hearing took place over 2 days but the judge hardly gave us any time. For almost the entire 2 days, the judge heard only the court-appointed psychologist and gave us only an hour at the end. We had submitted expert medical reports on the injury as well as on language and other issues. But the judge refused to let the experts testify. He also refused to let us take him through the reports.

They claimed that the parents had no explanations. But we were not allowed to see any of our baby’s medical documents and it was only after 13 months that we actually got to see them. If the German doctors were right in their assessment, why did they not let us see her medical records?

It was clear that Ariha had an external injury and external injuries can be accidental. Our medical expert quoted at least 30 cases from medical journals in which this kind of external perineal injury has happened, accidentally to baby boys and baby girls. The court totally ignored this fact and did not even acknowledge it in the court verdict. 

Then again, we are native Gujarati speakers and they gave us an Urdu-Punjabi-speaking translator. Therefore, the fact that we were having language difficulties as we did not understand German and our Hindi and English is also not that great, was said to be an excuse.

Coming back to that fateful night, I still shudder when I think of it that it was an accident that brought all this about. Our baby had a persistent case of diaper rash so we would let her play without the diaper for a few hours every evening. One evening she cried out suddenly while playing, I put her to sleep thinking she was tired. The next day I saw the blood in the diaper.

Maybe she fell or sat down on some toys with a sharp edge that could have hurt her; anything could have happened. That’s why we took her for a checkup.

One revelation even we didn’t know about was when many weeks later, her dadi (paternal grandmother) confessed that on that same evening, she had hurt the baby by mistake. This happened right after I had put Ariha to sleep. What happened was that once the baby fell asleep, my husband and I left her dadi in charge and went for a short walk. When we came back the baby was up and crying with her. I had to put her to sleep again.
 
What she did not tell us at that time was that when the baby woke up crying, she opened the diaper to check if it needed a change. While doing so she remembered that the astrologer she had consulted when Ariha was born had said the baby might have some bleeding issue in infancy. So she subjected the baby to an unduly invasive examination and accidentally hurt her in doing so. She did not say anything at the time as she was embarrassed.

I and my husband were both shocked when we learnt of this and we told the doctors about it, but it was too late and they refused to believe us. 

Later, once we got the medical records, our own experts explained that the injury was consistent with the baby having hurt herself on something when playing diaperless and the grandmother's action would have aggravated it. They said that the German doctors’ repeated invasive examinations of the baby could also have extended the injury.

I want to ask them many questions. The most important one was that the first time on 17th September 2021, when we got Ariha to the doctor, they said its hormonal bleeding and when we took her to the hospital after 5 days on 21st September 2021 for a follow-up checkup, they said Ariha had an injury. Now the judge has also confirmed that Ariha was injured on 16th September 2021, then why did the German doctors misdiagnose it as hormonal bleeding on 17th? and instead of accepting their mistake on the 21st, they blamed us the parents for the injury. 

Even on the 21st of September also, I had to wait so long at the doctors as she was treated many hours later after we came in. If it was a serious injury, wouldn’t they have immediately rushed her for treatment?

And then one more surprising thing too. When Ariha was 3 months old, I had given her an oil massage as is our Indian custom, before her bath. At that time, she had slipped from my grip as I was trying to put her in the bathtub which was on the tabletop. Luckily I managed to save her from falling down but bumped her head on a tabletop. The German doctor we consulted, said there was no need for treatment for this. That whole thing, many months later was blown out of proportion in court.

The German court declared that this was also another incident of grievous injury and despite a social worker who had cleared us after spending time in our house, this issue came back to haunt us all over again. A minor head bump was played up as a multiple blunt force trauma. I ask all of you who are new parents is it not possible that we may have a few mishaps as we raise a child considering that we are also new to the process and still learning how the whole parenting thing works? There could be some issues and some accidents but that does not qualify us to be bad parents.

There are more issues of this unfair treatment being meted out to us. Ariha has sensitive skin because of that she had a skin allergy so there were marks on her back since the pediatric doctor in Germany couldn’t give us satisfactory answers, we sent her photos to an Indian doctor for treatment. That was also turned against us. The court said that was also proof of us ill-treating our child. 

Ariha has got the same skin allergies now as she is in foster care and her German foster carer takes her to the doctor for it. But if a German foster carer takes Ariha for the same marks to doctors, no one suspects her but if the parents do the same, then these marks are injuries?

If the German court has to listen to just one side and give a verdict then why have a trial at all? They are not listening to the Indian government’s pleas too and ignoring all of ours. Why can't they let her be in her own country in foster care if that is what is safe for her instead of putting her in paid German foster care? This has no logic, no validation.

She is a Jain child and being fed eggs. If a Jewish child was in German custody, would they dream of giving her non-kosher food? Never. It is our child’s right to be in tune with her culture and country, linguistically and religiously and all trials can happen here and yet Germany is not letting that happen. No reason justifies this atrocity on a small child who cannot speak up for herself.

We are fighting many battles.

One is for our child to be with us. She has been in foster care for so long in a remote German village with no access to Indians. She will speak a different language as she will pick up speech now, cultivate different food habits and slowly forget her roots, her culture and her parents as she is in a formative stage now; her most crucial stage. How will all that be set right, ever?

We are losing her, despite our dogged fight and our determination against all odds. In such a situation, all we can do is ask for the personal involvement of our Prime Minister Modi ji in this. If he can intervene, only then will this be solved. 

It is my earnest appeal to the government of India, Prime Minister Narendra Modiji and Indians the world over for their support in Ariha’s case so that our baby is safe, happy and comes back home.

CASE UPDATE: There was a police investigation that was closed in February 2022, without any formal charges being filed. Yet the baby is still in the custody of the Child Welfare Services, Jugendamt in Germany, who filed a civil custody case for the termination of parental rights and permanent custody of the child. Since then, both Dhara and Bhavesh, the parents have been fighting a legal battle for the custody of their child, who now is over two years old.

Text: By Tashneem Chaudhury
Source: Anushree Bhaumik

 

Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.

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