The trailer of Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway has just been released. I invite you all to watch it. I want to congratulate Sagarika, the mother, the true heroine of this story, for having made his happen.

I was jubilant this morning when I woke up with the expectation of this trailer. But when I saw the trailer, I was moved to tears. I was reminded of all the events…everything the Bhattacharya family in Norway went through. This is one phenomenon that is happening in the world of the state snatching children brutally from their mother’ laps, from their loving parents, where the drama of the reality far exceeds any film, any theatre that you could do about it.

I remember well the afternoon in my house when Sagarika was visiting Delhi. She had been invited by Lady Irwin College to speak about her experience by the Family Specialist and Psychology Department. She had asked my help to write up her speech and I said just talk about what happened. Describe it step by step. And I well remember, when she described to me the moment when her children were snatched from her. I well remember…..it was just the two of us in that room…..and the air became heavy with the sheer anguish and horror of that moment……

I just want to say that I am so proud of you, Sagarika Chakraborty. A simple woman, a very young girl who had all these dreams for her future, for her life. A very gentle person. A person who is like a butterfly in a garden. Sagarika is very beautiful if you see her in real life. And there is a lightness and joy and vitality about her. She also has a very charismatic personality. Very impressive young lady.

Her parents were able to find her such a good match. A young man with a fantastic job in Norway. And Sagarika was so excited about the new life that she would be seeing in Europe which she had only read about and heard about. She went there and she made the mistake of trusting the system. She had her two babies there.

What happened to her was completely….she was completely unprepared…she was prepared for life and a housewife and perhaps she would have taken a small job in Norway. She could never have imagined and was completely unprepared for what was done to her there.

Her dreams were shattered. Her soul was ripped apart by this brutal snatching of her baby.

But she found the resolve to get up and get her children back. To save them from the tragedy of living as orphans with some paid foster carers in a foreign country. She managed to bring them back. She managed to prove to the system over here that she was a fit, capable and loving mother.

She had a lot of support for her family. Her wonderful parents – Shikha Aunty and Manotosh Uncle. I was so rewarded for all the work I did in Sagarika’s case just by getting to know her parents.

There is so much strength and so much wisdom among the simple, ordinary people of our country. Again and again I see this, and again and again it humbles me, and I feel so blessed that life gave me the opportunity to interact with people that I might not have ordinarily met. It is this deep wisdom of our country, and big heart that we have as a people, and our strong family values that prevails every time, in all these fights. And these are the reasons why Sagarika won. How she won against a whole nation.

Please watch this film! And support this cause. This wanton snatching of children from families is not doing doing any good. It is not helping anyone. It is causing deep anguish. The whole system is mistaken.

Ofcourse there are children who suffer, who are ill-treated, who deserve justice and they don’t get it. Yes, there is that. But this system is not even identifying those children. The whole system is wrong from the ground up. It has to be uprooted.

I also want to thank all my Norwegian friends. It was so puzzling for me when I first encountered this system in Sagarika’s case. I simply could not understand how this could be. Then you got in touch. There was a wonderful lady, Dr Marianne Skanland from Norway who wrote about the Norwegian child services. She described how cruel and inhumane they are. How unfair the whole process is. How they target families in the most determined way to remove children. How the entire process is about justifying the removal and absolutely no genuine investigation into what is required for the best interests of the child.

She wrote a chilling opinion editorial in the Indian papers and that played a very important role in helping the public to understand what was going on and in rallying support behind this family.

Dr Skanland has devoted her life to this issue. She is a real hero for the movement around the world. She gets in touch with people whenever she hears of such cases and gives them the benefit of her experience with the system.

That was the first [Norwegian to reach out]. But it heralded a whole flock, an entire army of swallows from Norway who joined. Marius Reikeras who is watching this – ‘Hi Marius!’ – and who we hope to have come to India for the release of this film next month. Ruby Harrold-Claesson who runs an organisation called the Nordic Committee for Human Rights which helps families in Scandinavia in this situation. The energetic Connie Reguli from the United States of America, who has been valiantly battling for families, particularly families that aren’t well off because those are the families that are targeted by this system.

There are many, many names. I could not mention all of them. But you are in my heart as I say this. I have more friends from Norway on my Facebook profile that from any other country which shows how serious this problem is in Norway. I thank them for all the support, all the information they have sent. They have also supported Indian families with taken children in other countries.

I hope that a lot of people from Norway will come. I am very happy that Marius is coming. Marius is a lawyer and human rights activist. He has been travelling all around the world on this issue, highlighting human rights violations in Norway. Particularly by their child protective services. I hope that he will come and spend some time speaking to people in India and educating Indians about what is going on. I hope that more people from Norway will be able to come.

India has a lot of respect for the West. Indians have learnt a lot from the West. But this is one area in which the West is very grossly mistaken. It is people like you from Norway who have been working on this issue that would be the most effective if you were to come and speak to people over here about what is going on.

I would also like to appeal to people of other countries who have been affected by these child protective services….because they do tend to target immigrant children…I would like to invite people from Romania, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and from all the African nations whose children have been tortured by this system, families have been ruined by this system, we need to make an international appeal for child protective services to be investigated, and for the systemic flaws in the system to come out.

I think that we should think about getting  together and making a joint appeal to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, because everything that is being done by these child protection services is a violation of very established international human rights that have been recognised since the Second World War and built on the horrendous experience of that War, which are being violated by these child protective services today.

I think that if we all come together and make this an international appeal, then we will be heard and something can finally be done to dismantle this horrible system. It is a misconceived system. The problem that it claims to address of children who are suffering, of children who are in a bad situation and not receiving help from even from their family, or being mistreated by their own family, we have to find a different way of addressing that issue.

Sagarika, you’re an absolute superstar. I wish you all the best for your life going forward. Yes, everything that you deserved was snatched away from you. But I am sure that it will come back, and your experience and resilience. And the fact that you have shown the world ten years later how well you have brought up your children, how happy you are as a family….this is such a big gift you have given to the world, you should feel very proud and optimistic about what the future holds for you.

Lots of love and congratulations also to Shikha Aunty and Manotosh Uncle. And to my darling children. To Oishi and Ritam. God bless you. May you keep smiling and do as well as you have done so far. May the whole world send their blessings to you. May your life reward you with everything to make up for the few months that you lost which other children have with their parents.