New Delhi: The case of Baby A, a two-year-old Indian girl who was taken away from her parents by the German authorities in 2021, has escalated roughly two months since a German court denied the parents custody on grounds that she suffered deliberate injuries in their care.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Thursday said it had summoned German Ambassador Philipp Ackermann earlier in the week to express its concern over the child’s condition in foster care. MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the case was being given “high priority” status.
In a press briefing Thursday, the MEA, while calling for the “early return of the child”, observed that Baby A’s “cultural rights and rights as an Indian are being infringed upon by her being placed in German foster care”.
“We will continue to press German authorities on this matter,” the ministry added.
Baby A was taken from her parents when she was seven months old. While she stayed with a 62-year-old foster mother for around two years, her mother Dhara Shah revealed at a press conference in June that the toddler had been transferred to an institution for children with mental illness before the German court pronounced its judgment on 13 June.
Speaking to ThePrint in June, the parents, Bhavesh and Dhara Shah, had expressed fears that their daughter’s nationality may be changed, making her repatriation difficult.
The case has caused a diplomatic row between India and Germany. According to reports, the German ambassador was summoned by Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra last Monday and recent developments in the case were discussed.
ThePrint reached Sebastian Fuchs, spokesperson for the German Embassy in New Delhi, via text but did not get a response. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
German ambassador Ackermann had told ThePrint in June, “We see the concern of many people when it comes to this child. The child has experienced unspeakable harshness in her life. My ministry is working very closely with MEA [Indian Ministry of External Affairs] to ensure the Indianness of the child is safeguarded.”
The MEA’s Thursday briefing came a day after a group of 20 MPs from different political parties, led by Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan, urged the central government to support repatriation of the child to India. They, along with Baby A’s mother Dhara, also met External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and requested him to intervene in the case.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat, who was among the 20 MPs, compared the matter to a 2011 Norway case, where two Indian children were taken away from their parents by the Norway child welfare services and put in foster care. India had protested the move and the children were returned in 2012 to their family members.
“What happened in the Norway case? The Prime Minister’s office directly intervened and a special envoy was sent to bring back the two children. Why can’t similar action be taken now?” Karat asked.
Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackery) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi, who was also among the 20 MPs, called the case a “humanitarian tragedy” and said that the leaders would even meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “ensure that the child is brought up in an Indian foster home and not a German household”.
This is not the first time politicians have backed the Shahs’ pursuit to reunite with their child. In June, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde had written to Jaishankar, asking him to meet the child’s parents. Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas along with 59 other MPs from 19 political parties also wrote to Ackermann requesting that Baby A be returned to India.
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What is the case?
The case dates back to 2021, revolving around an incident where Baby A’s parents took her to the hospital with a perineal injury — an injury in the genital region. The child was then removed from parental custody by German Youth Services, Jugendamt, over allegations of sexual abuse and parental negligence.
While these charges were later ruled out and the criminal investigation against the parents was closed in February 2022, the Shahs had been fighting for parental rights against Jugendamt and more frequent visitations until the 13 June judgment.
In two judgments dated 13 June, which ThePrint has seen, a court in Berlin’s Pankow denied the custody of Baby A to her biological parents on the grounds that the child suffered “deliberate injuries” while in their care. It cited two injuries that she had suffered — on the head and back in April 2021, allegedly caused while she was being bathed, and one on the genitals dating to September 2021.
ThePrint had earlier reported the parents’ statements regarding the injuries. They had said that the head injury was caused on 29 April 2021 when the baby — two months old at the time — struck her head on a counter after her oil massage, while the genital injury was caused when she was playing without her diaper on, as it was removed for a few hours every evening owing to diaper rash.
This injury was aggravated by an invasive inspection by the paternal grandmother, the parents said. ThePrint had also learnt that the then seven-month-old Baby A also had to undergo numerous invasive tests, such as vaginoscopy and cystoscopy, at the hospital as doctors suspected the parents of sexual abuse. The parents believe these invasive methods on the then baby were also responsible for further aggravating the injury.
Furthermore, the head injury, as mentioned in the judgment, was revealed to be a hairline fracture on the back of the skull, which had been misdiagnosed by doctors earlier.
What the Berlin court said
In its judgment on parental rights, the court stated, “The custodial parents are to be deprived of parental care to avert the existing danger to the child. The court is convinced that the best interests of the child are at risk…and that the best interests of the child will be impaired if the court does not intervene.”
Giving German Child Services full custody of the child, the court observed that “the development of a bond (between Baby A and her parents) was no longer in the foreground”.
The parents complained that they were treated unfairly by the German court as they only got to speak for an hour in the 11-hour-long trial, which ThePrint reported earlier.
The judgment took more than a year to come out because of a key factor, the report of the psychologist appointed by the court to evaluate the parent’s behaviour and relationship with the child. The psychologist, who had observed the Shahs’ visits with the child every two weeks, testified in court for more than 9 hours in two hearings on 21 February and 31 March 2023.
In her report, the psychologist observed Baby A’s three primary caregivers to be her 62-year-old foster mother and her parents. The psychologist also said that the child had stronger attachments to her parents than her foster mother.
The psychologist also advised that “one parent to stay with the child in a facility”, and suggested that if the parents learn skills like discipline and German, as it is the only language Baby A understands, the child could rejoin them.
However, the judgment found no mention of these recommendations. Referring to the psychologist’s assessment of the family only once to support the statements of the medical experts, it said that the parents “pursue their own interests before those of the child”.
Despite an overall positive report from the psychologist, the court reduced the visitation rights of the parents from twice a month to once every 1 to 2 months “at most until the child reaches school age”.
The court also directed the parents to pay roughly €12,000 or Rs 11 lakh for the complete trial as well for the fostering of Baby A in the German Child Service.
Injuries suffered by the child
ThePrint had earlier reported that the Jugendamt had allegedly made the parents sign a document in German, without giving them proper translators, before taking the child away.
While giving their statements in 2021, the family claimed that a mistranslation between the words humare paas, meaning ‘with us i.e the family’ and hum meaning ‘I or an individual’ by the government-appointed Urdu translator further complicated the trial.
Based on the German medical evaluators’ report, the court said, “The parents have so far not been able to explain the events in question in a sufficiently consistent manner, which led to the damage to the child.”
While the parents’ stated that it was the child’s grandmother who had caused the injury to her genitals, by penetrating her using her fingers “in order to check whether everything was alright with the child’s vagina”, the court said the insertion of a finger into the vagina “could not justify the nature of the injuries caused”, based on expert observations.
Citing “the physical and thus at the same time psychological abuse of the child by the mother and/or father”, the court said the “custodial parents are to be deprived of parental care to avert the existing danger to the child”.
Meanwhile, at a press conference in New Delhi in June this year, Baby A’s mother observed that the trial was unfair while stating their plans to appeal to a higher court on both the custody and visitation judgments.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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