India to help Norway couple
India on Friday assured all help to the Indian couple arrested in Norway for allegedly trying to discipline their seven-year-old son for wetting his pants.
Reacting swiftly to the request made by the lawyer of the Indian couple - Chandrashekar Vallabhaneni and his wife Anupama - an officer of the Indian embassy met the husband after getting consular access, official sources said.
They said that the consular officer met Chandrashekar on Friday and ascertained his welfare besides asking for information that he may like to convey.
The officer explained the situation to him, assured that the Embassy will continue to keep in touch with his lawyer and that it stands ready to assist them, the sources said.
According to the information with the mission, Chandrasekhar, a software professional from Andhra Pradesh and his wife were taken into custody by the police in Oslo.
The police arrested Chandrasekhar, a TCS employee nine months after the child complained to his school teachers that his parents were threatening to send him back to India for his acts, Chandrasekhar’s nephew V Shailendra, who is in Hyderabad, claimed.
Chandrasekhar’s older son Sai Sriram told teachers in Oslo that his parents had reprimanded him harshly for wetting his pants. The boy was found wetting his pants in the school bus which was reported to his father, who in turn “threatened” the child that he would be sent back to India if he repeated that again, Shailendra said, adding the boy was also found bringing toys from school.
“The Norwegian child welfare authorities took Sai Sriram away for a month, but returned him to his parents. They have conducted some medical tests and established that he had minor behavioral problems because he is hyperactive,” he said.
According to Seetharam, a colleague of Chandrasekhar who returned from Oslo on Friday, the family returned to India in July. “Chandrasekhar returned to Norway, once again for work and was issued court summons, after which he was arrested on Monday along with his wife Anupama, who had travelled to Oslo on a later date to attend the court hearing along with her husband.”
He said Anupama was supposed to return to India and had even booked a return ticket. “They might not have anticipated that they will be arrested,” he said.
