This is straight out of a Bollywood tearjerker. A Muslim man who has no family finds an abandoned Hindu girl at a railway station and ‘adopts’ her.
Qadri, 60, adopted the child who was abandoned at a railway station
AHMEDABAD: This is straight out of a Bollywood tearjerker. A Muslim man who has no family finds an abandoned Hindu girl at a railway station and ‘adopts’ her. The father-daughter duo is living a happy life but by a quirk of fate, the police land at the man’s door and take away the girl, accusing him of keeping her illegally.
Now, at 60, Sarfaraz Qadri, a magician by profession, is fighting a legal battle for custody of his daughter. The girl, Varsha Patel, alias Munni, was handed over to a women’s protection cell in Bharuch after the chief judicial magistrate’s court there rejected the application filed by Qadri seeking the girl’s custody.
According to his application filed on August 25, Qadri had gone to Itarsi in Madhya Pradesh for a show in 1995. On his way back home, he found the girl crying at the railway station.
When he asked her who she was and where she had come from, she answered that she did not know; Qadri then decided to take her with him.
Qadri had lost his wife and three children much before he met the girl. His two sons and a daughter died many years back. His daughter died of blood cancer.
The shock of their sister’s death led the two boys to commit suicide while the grief-stricken wife took her life on learning of the death of her children.
The complaint says that Qadri brought Munni back with him to Tankaria, a village in Bharuch. A few years later, a sister-brother duo who were learning magic from Qadri, came to stay with him without informing their families.
A complaint was registered with the Palej police by the father of the brother-sister duo and the police landed at Qadri’s doorstep. During investigations, they also became suspicious of Munni and inquired about her.
After learning about her story, the police sent her to the women’s protection cell in Bharuch. In his application, Qadri has said that he raised the girl as his daughter and so he should be given her custody.
In her statement to the court of the chief judicial magistrate, Munni has said that she wants to go with her father. She has said in her statement that although she recalls her father’s names as Jagdishbhai Patel, she does not remember her mother’s name. She also says that she is 18 years old now.
The court of the chief judicial magistrate, however, observed that whenever a minor child is found, the nearest police station needs to be informed or the child needs to be handed over to its relatives. However, Qadri did not do this. The court also observed that Qadri does not have a permanent address of his own and that although he counts his child as his heir, there is no record to prove so.
Qadri has now approached Ahmedabad lawyer Anis Desai and the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan for him.
v_vijayapalan@dnaindia.net 
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}