Ipoh Court orders Muslim convert to return child or face jail

KUALA LUMPUR, May 30 ― Muslim convert Mohd Ridzuan Abdullah was ordered by an Ipoh High Court today to return his six-year-old daughter to his estranged ex-wife M. Indira Gandhi by next week or face imprisonment, lawyer New Sin Yew said.

According to New, Judicial Commissioner Lee Swee Seng decided that Mohd Ridzuan was guilty of contempt of court when he failed to comply with a 2010 ruling granting custody of Prasana Diksa to Indira.

At the time, Mohd Ridzuan had made off with the then one-year-old, later relying on a ruling by the Shariah Court, granting him custody of the couple’s three children.

“Now he (the judge) temporarily suspended the warrant of committal until next Friday, 12pm for the husband to deliver the child to Kula & Associates’s office.

“If the husband doesn’t deliver by then, the police will proceed to arrest him, he will be imprisoned until he purges his contempt,” the lawyer holding a watching brief for the Bar Council told The Malay Mail Online.

Today, Lee also granted Indira a recovery order, where the police are directed to help track down the child.

According to New, Lee ordered Mohd Ridzuan to pay RM15,000 and RM5,000 to Indira for her legal costs in applying for the contempt of court order and recovery order respectively.

When contacted, Indira’s lawyer M. Kulasegaran called Lee’s judgment a “landmark decision”, describing it as a “bold” ruling where all issues of public importance were aired.

In the lengthy judgment which took Lee close to three hours to read out, Kulasegaran highlighted that the judge said that the civil courts are set up by the Federal Constitution, while the Shariah courts are set up under state laws.

According to Kulasegaran, the judge said that the Shariah courts would be “inferior” to the civil court, meaning that the civil courts’ decision would take precedence over the Islamic court’s decision.

In the protracted child custody dispute, Ridzuan obtained a custody order from the Shariah court in September 2009, while Indira won full custody of her three children at the Ipoh High Court on March 11, 2010.

But Kulasegaran said that Lee had ruled that the Shariah court ― where Indira as a non-Muslim has no right to be heard ― had went beyond its powers when granting the custody order to Ridzuan.

“The court said the custody order made by the Shariah court is in excess of jurisdiction and therefore it becomes null and void,” he said.

While the police failed to help Indira in getting back her child, the judge noted that they could have been “confused” by the competing civil court and shariah court’s orders, Kulasegaran said.

With the Ipoh High Court today clearing up the position on the two competing jurisdictions, “it is incumbent on the police to assist to recover this child”, he added.

He confirmed that Ridzuan’s lawyers have said that they are appealing the High Court decision today and will be seeking for a stay.

When explaining the key grounds of Lee’s decision today, New also pointed out that the judge, in finding Ridzuan in contempt of court, said he “cannot choose” whether or not to obey the civil court’s custody order.

On April 3, 2009, Mohd Ridzuan, then known as K. Pathmanathan, left the house with one-year-old Prasana and the birth certificates of the couple’s three children, later using the birth documents to convert the trio to Islam.

On July 25 last year, the Ipoh High Court annulled the conversion certificates of five-year-old Prasana and her siblings Tevi Darsiny and Karan Dinish — aged 16 and 15, declaring it unconstitutional to force a minor to embrace a different faith without the consent of both parents.

But Ridzuan failed to turn up in court with Prasana and return her to Indira despite the Ipoh High Court’s orders.

Indira’s case is one in a series of high-profile tussles over child custody and child conversion to Islam cases.

In another high-profile case, Viran Nagapan, who is now Izwan Abdullah since his conversion to Islam, took off with his six-year-old son Mithran despite losing the custody to the Hindu mother Deepa Subramaniam in the civil court on April 7.

Izwan, who had last year won a custody order from the Shariah court after converting his two children to Islam without informing Deepa, has yet to return the son.

Last week, the Seremban High Court granted Deepa a recovery order, to direct the police to return the six-year-old to her.

According to Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO), the advocacy group assisting Deepa, the police have now referred to the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) for advice on the conflicting custody orders from the two courts.

Such cases highlight the clash between Malaysia’s dual track legal system of civil courts and Syariah courts — with the latter applying to Muslims only.