Sagarika Chakraborty was the Bengali mother whose children – a toddler of 2.5 years and a suckling infant of 5 months – were snatched by Norwegian child services, ‘Barnevernet’, in Norway in May 2011. The family were all Indian citizens and were in Norway as the father had taken work there. Links to essays, reports and papers on the Norway case, which came to be known as the ‘Bhattacharya case’ after the children’s paternal name, are provided at the end of this post.
Sagarika was able to win her children back after a prolonged struggle involving high level intervention from the Indian Government and a dramatic news story filled with twists and turns. The children came back to their mother’s lap for good in early 2013. The father remained in Norway. Sagarika raised the children singlehandedly with her parents in Kolkata, and ten years later wrote about her experience in the book ‘Journey of a Mother’. The videos below are from her book launch in New Delhi on 31 May 2022. The book was made into a movie, Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway, and released the following year in March 2023.
Read about the Bhattacharya case here.
The Iron Hand that Rocks the Cradle by Marianne Haslev Skanland, The Hindu, 2012
The Curious Case of ‘Child Protection’ in Norway by Prof. Marianne Haslev Skanland
What Does Gunnar Toresen Know About Children? by Suranya Aiyar
Norway NRI kids row: The Untold Story by Sagarika Bhattacharya, Pravasi Today, May 2012
The Confiscation of the Bhattacharya Children in Norway, A Case Study