Nearly six months after being taken into custody by the US Child Protection Services in New Jersey for alleged neglect by parents, the toddler son of an Indian couple in the USA has returned to an emotional reunion here.
One-and-a-half-year-old Indrashish, the son of Debashish and Pamela Saha, arrived here yesterday and met by relatives and grandparents with toys and balloons.
They took the child to their home at Baguihati in North 24 Parganas district.
Indrasish was accompanied by his uncle Bhaskar on an Emirates flight from Newark.
The child was ordered to be released from US foster care and given to the custody of his grandmother which was agreed to by the US authorities.
The US court, while allowing repatriation of the little boy, dismissed the case filed by the New Jersey Child Protection Services against his parents.
The New Jersey authorities had alleged that the injuries sustained by Indrasish three weeks after he went to the US for the first time with his parents, was caused deliberately and not sustained in an accidental fall at home on August nine at Parsippany town in New Jersey.
Dismissing the case, the court allowed the mother to appeal against the New Jersey authorities, which she did to clear her name.
The parents did not ask for custody in the US court as it would require that their son remain in interim foster care where he had suffered injuries and medical emergencies on multiple occasions.
The boy would go to his grandparent’s house at Gangarampur in South Dinajpur district later.
The Indrasish case has striking similarity to the return of three-year-old Abhigyan and one-year-old Aishwarya, from Norway to the custody of their uncle Arunabhas Bhattacharya as per a Norway court order last year, after a prolonged legal battle.
——PTI