My son was taken from us when he was a little over three. He is now 13 and in foster care. For the first six years, I was allowed to see him twice a year for a total of four hours. Now it is up to three times in a year till he turns 18. He has developed learning and concentration difficulties and other psychological problems, and has little chance of higher education. By the time he is 18, [I fear] he will not have any social relations,” Ove Dag Knarvik tells mid-day over a video call from alesund in Norway. The retired Norwegian naval architect and marine engineer lost two of his children to Barnevernet or the Norwegian Child Welfare Services, a public agency responsible for child protection in Norway. Barnevernet is the same agency that had back in 2011 taken NRI couple Sagarika and Anurup Bhattacharya’s children away for “improper parenting”. What followed was an arduous battle for custody, accompanied by diplomatic exchanges between the two countries and widespread media attention. The story is also the basis for the upcoming Rani Mukerji-starrer Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway.  

What many hope the film will shed light on is the fact that these are not stray cases. Critics term it part of a larger systematic injustice that has been underway in the country for years. “Since 2018, Norway has been convicted 15 times for human rights violations connected with cases of childcare in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which is more than the rest of all of Europe put together,” Marius Reikeras says. The human rights lawyer, who has debated Norway’s human rights violations in more than 50 countries, has in the last 13 years been involved with child protective service cases and is expected to arrive in India to lend his support to Bhattacharya and others like her when the film releases. He hopes to participate in public discussions around the subject while here. It took a while, he admits, due to Norway’s reputation for being a small developed country in the north with no glaring social issues or human rights encroachments. “But in 2013, thanks to a lot of international pressure, we managed to get some attention and European institutions like the ECHR and the European Parliament realised that there was something severely wrong going on in Norway.”