Kidnapped by estranged British husband, Kerala woman gets back son after legal battle
After a legal battle in London, Anna Mathews has got back her five-year-old son, who was kidnapped by her estranged husband, a British National.
Anna who stays in Thiruvananthapuram, wrote a Facebook post saying that her son Samuel Charles went missing along with his father, James Peirce aka Tom, a British citizen, on December 31, 2016. The post had gone viral on social media.
Sources close to Anna say that she filed a petition in a UK court arguing that her son was kidnapped by her estranged husband without any legality.
A close friend of Anna, Radha Krishnan wrote on Facebook, “James told the court that his lawyer in India advised him to leave the country with Sam. In the middle of the proceedings, the judge observed that this is one of the clearest cases of wrongdoing and one of the worst cases of child abuse.”
“James kept saying that the Indian courts are corrupt and don't deliver proper judgements, to which the judge replied, this a very colonial thing to say. The judge was determined to finish the case in just one hearing and allowed James to speak for almost 90 minutes, which means he got a fair hearing,” Radha Krishnan writes.
However, Anna won the legal battle and while speaking to The News Minute, she said that she is grateful to all those who supported her. “I could not back down in the fight because I owed it to Sam, of course, but also to all the wonderful people who kept saying to me that a mother's love would ultimately conquer all,” she said.
Mathews said that Sam was very excited to meet her. She wrote on Facebook that Sam asked for Kerala food the moment he reached back home.
“Sam reached at about 7pm. He was wearing a suit and a tie. I asked later why he was not wearing a jacket considering the cold and he said he wanted to look smart. He came home and asked for "puttu" to eat. We didn't have that so he didn't eat anything. He seemed too excited to eat or sleep,” she wrote about Sam coming back.
In India, a family court had granted Anna custody of the child after she filed an appeal for divorce. After petitioning the Kerala High Court, James was permitted custody of his son for six days from December 26, 2016. But on the evening of December 31, when her son was supposed to return home, James allegedly went missing with Samuel.
Police had earlier said that the original documents of James, including his passport were with Kerala High Court, so he would not leave the country. But Anna in a Facebook post on January 19 had confirmed that her son Sam was taken to London by James.
“The British High Commission in Chennai confirmed my worst fears. James obtained emergency travel documents from Kathmandu to the UK. The original passports are at the Kerala High Court.
The kidnapping was carefully planned, as many of you can imagine, and James fooled and lied to several people, the Indian and British governments, the courts, his unwell landlord (whom he hadn’t paid rent to, in six months) and the person who rented the car to him (which hasn’t been returned),” she wrote on January 19.
After that, Anna had gone to London and filed a legal suit against James to get her son back.