KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 21 — Hindu mother M. Indira Gandhi has reportedly expressed her gratitude to outgoing chief justice Tun Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat for reiterating that the fight for her unilaterally converted child was not about religion.
Free Malaysia Today cited her saying that the case was always about a mother being deprived of her daughter right from the beginning.
“I am thankful to Tengku Maimun for remembering what this case is really about,” she was quoted saying.
“Prasana Diksa is going to be 17 years old this year. I’ve been separated from my daughter for way too long.”
Indira said that despite the landmark decision, she is still not reunited with her abducted daughter due to lack of enforcement.
“Many thought the Federal Court decision meant I would get my daughter back. But this case is far from over and the authorities have been silent.
“I have done everything I can from a legal perspective, but this is injustice,” she reportedly said.
Yesterday, Tengku Maimun told a Universiti Malaya event that the case of Indira Gandhi was a pivotal case in her career.
She made it clear that the case has nothing to do with principles of Islam as the couple’s marriage was registered under civil law.
In her legal battle for her children, Indira had pursued the matter all the way to the Federal Court, where she succeeded in securing a decision annulling the unilateral conversion of her children and effectively made the practice unlawful and unconstitutional.
Yet, her watershed legal victory has been scant consolation for Indira, as authorities have made no headway in returning Prasana to her since the girl’s abduction in 2009.
That year, Indira’s ex-husband, Muhammad Riduan, formerly known as K. Pathmanathan, embraced Islam and converted all three of his children with Indira on April 2 the same year without her knowledge.
Muhammad Ridhuan abducted Prasana in 2009, when she was just 11 months’ old, shortly after converting to Islam.
After a protracted court battle, the Federal Court in January 2018 finally ruled that the unilateral conversions of Indira’s children were unlawful and unconstitutional.