ISTANBUL
Sagarika Chakraborty’s eyes widen and her voice trembles. She looks away from the camera as a smile breaks across her face: a smile of defiance.
“I don’t know if I’m good or bad, but I do know that I’m a mother. “A mother can do anything for her children,” she says, giving a glimpse of what motherhood means to a woman who moved mountains when her children were taken away by Norway’s Barnevernet child welfare service.
Over a decade ago, Chakraborty defied governments, rebelled against institutions, and braved cruel accusations to get back together with her two children.
They say time heals everything, but in the case of this Indian woman, the ghosts of her past haunt her present while she still faces painful questions and accusations about the ordeal.
A recent film, Mrs. Chatterjee vs. Norway, brought the darkest chapter of her life to life, depicting what she went through in Norway and then in India.
Chakraborty received critical acclaim and sympathy, but was also rejected by the Norwegian embassy and the ambassador to India, who described it as “a work of fiction based on an actual case”.
A statement from the embassy argued that Norway does not remove children from their families “because of the cultural differences described in the film,” such as eating with their hands or sleeping in bed with their parents.
Rather, the reason for placing children in alternative care is that they are exposed to neglect, violence or other forms of abuse, it said.
For Chakraborty, the envoy’s and embassy’s claims carry no weight.
“Whatever they said is completely false,” she told Anadolu in a video interview.
“The film is actually based on my book and … I already have the court ruling that says what happened at the time and the allegations against me, like kids sleeping in bed with their parents and that I hand feed them .”
Marius Reikeras, a former lawyer and Norwegian activist who has supported Chakraborty for years, and her lawyer in India, Suranya Aiyar, also criticized Norwegian Ambassador Hans Jacob Frydenlund for saying he had “apparently close to zero” knowledge on the subject.
In a video call with Anadolu, Reikeras urged the envoy to show humility and apologize to Chakraborty.
“Rather than humble and really face up to reality, including this case where the children were actually evicted from Sagarika’s family for no particular reason, he only makes things worse by continuing to be arrogant towards international society,” he said he.
“Enormous Trauma”
As she tells her story, the first words Chakraborty uses to describe what she’s been through are “tremendous trauma.”
In 2007 she married a geophysicist in India and soon after, the couple emigrated to Stavanger, a small town in southwestern Norway.
A year later they had their first child, a son. Her problems with Norwegian childcare began after the birth of her daughter in December 2010.
It was then that two Barnevernet staff began visiting her home, claiming they were there to provide postpartum care to the mother and to help with the newborn.
“It was a very busy time for me with two small babies around the house and no help,” Chakraborty said.
However, the Barnevernet officers – both women – had done nothing to help, she said.
“They just sat on the sofa and whispered and took notes,” she said.
According to Chakraborty, she was once asked if all children in India defecated in public, as shown in the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire.
Barnevernet took the children away from her in May 2011, when her daughter was just five months old and her son just over two years old, the same day Chakraborty and her husband had an argument in front of them.
“I ran after the car. I just fell to the ground. I screamed and cried until I passed out,” she recalls.
In its appraisal reports, the agency raised concerns about the couple’s parenting style and later accused Chakraborty of mental incompetence.
The parents initially won an appeal to regain custody, but a local court overturned the decision and their children were placed in foster care, living with two different families within less than a year.
Chakraborty’s son began developing signs of autism, stopped eating and lost his speech while their young daughter became ill.
“My son cried every day. He hasn’t eaten anything. The baby would not drink milk… Both babies’ lives were at stake at this point,” she said.
Over the months, Chakraborty lobbied the Indian government for help and organized protests to gain attention until the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs negotiated an agreement that would see her children relocated to India.
For that deal, Chakraborty said she was forced to sign a document granting custody to her brother-in-law.
“Happiest Woman”
That was the start of another whole ordeal.
When she returned to India to fetch her children in April 2012, her in-laws in Kolkata refused to even introduce her to the children while her husband did not return to India, effectively ending their marriage.
Against mounting odds, Chakraborty pursued a legal battle in India and eventually gained custody of their children in January 2013.
She is now 41 years old and lives in Noida, an up-and-coming IT center in northern India, where she works as a software developer.
She considers herself very fortunate that she was able to bring her children back from Barnevernet.
“When I was organizing protests, I met several people whose children were being taken away. One was an Indian woman who had a Norwegian husband and seven children. Every time she gave birth, they took the baby away from her,” Chakraborty said.
The reason given was the same as that used against Chakraborty: the woman was not mentally healthy and unable to raise her children.
“I’m the happiest woman … really happy that I got custody of my kids back,” she said.
Norway attacks “many immigrant families”.
Reikeras, the activist, said Norwegian child protection agencies often target foreigners.
He said the European Court of Human Rights had made 15 judgments against Norway in child welfare cases, with at least 65% of the cases involving immigrants.
“The only thing I can say for sure is that Norway tends to target many immigrant families, which is why the European Court of Human Rights has also focused on immigrant families,” he said.
Reikeras said there is a clear pattern with the Barnevernet taking on children from high-performing and working families.
In his opinion, one reason is that there is a lot of money in child care.
“The authorities spend so much money on a system like this. You have to take a certain number of children into public custody each year to justify the system,” he said, explaining that it’s also lucrative for lawyers, social workers and judges.
Another reason is that these Norwegian authorities have a specific goal to “adjust these families to the Norwegian standard, whatever that means,” he added.
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