Sidestepping court conflicts, IGP touts childcare centre in custody disputes

KUALA LUMPUR, June 10 ― Children in interfaith custody disputes could now be housed in childcare centres to avoid disputes arising from conflicting orders from both the civil courts and Shariah courts, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said today.

Khalid said children placed in these centres will be accessible to both parents to ensure fairness, national news agency Bernama reported today.

“I have ordered the district police chiefs (in the related areas) to negotiate with the relevant quarters so the child will be placed at the childcare centre,” he was quoted saying.

“This way, both (parents) have the chance to visit their children,” he told reporters after a meeting in Sabah today.

This move would effectively allow police to avoid the enforcement of conflicting custody orders from both the Shariah court and civil courts.

Khalid was commenting on two similar cases in Perak and Negri Sembilan in which Muslim convert fathers refused to return the children they took from the Hindu mothers.

In the Perak case, Muslim convert Mohd Ridzuan Abdullah defied a deadline last Friday by the civil court to return his six-year-old daughter Prasana Diksa to Hindu mother Indira Gandhi.

Indira won custody of her three children in the Ipoh High Court in 2010, and the same court ruled last month that the custody order granted in 2009 by the Shariah Court to her former husband Mohd Ridzuan was “null and void”.

In the Negri Sembilan case, Muslim convert Izwan Abdullah has refused to return his six-year-old son Mithran Viran to Deepa Subramaniam despite the civil courts granting the Hindu mother custody rights.

Izwan instead cited the Shariah court’s 2013 order, where it granted him custody of his son.

Last Thursday, de facto law minister Nancy Shukri called on the police to act by taking the boy from his father and return him to his mother, in compliance with the civil court’s order.

In both the Perak and Negri Sembilan case, the civil courts have issued recovery orders, which directs the police to track down the abducted children and return them to the mothers.

But when served with the recovery order, police had told Deepa’s lawyers that they need to consult the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) first.

In April, the police had declined to investigate the snatching of Deepa’s son as an abduction case and had pointed out that they were bound by both custody orders from the civil courts and Shariah court.