The High Court on Thursday asked a father to bring his two US-born kids before the court on August 31 as their Japanese mother, now in separation, travelled to Bangladesh recently seeking custody of her minor children.
The court also asked the home secretary and the immigration police at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka not to allow the father, Imran Sharif, and the two minors aged between 9 and 11 to leave Bangladesh for the next 30 days.
An online bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Md Mostafizur Rahman issued the ruling after hearing a writ petition filed by the Japanese mother on Thursday.
The father along with two minors returned to Bangladesh from Japan on February 18, pending hearings of a family lawsuit with a Japanese court since January 28 over the custody of the children and the process of divorce sought by Eriko Nakano on January 18, her lawyer Shishir Manir told the court.
The lawyer said that the father picked the minors from their schools on January 21 and detained them before flying to Bangladesh. The Japanese family court gave a verdict on May 21 and asked the father to hand over the children to the custody of the mother.
The court also asked the government, the father and his sister Amina Jebin to explain in two weeks why the minors would not be brought before the court for its satisfaction that they were not detained illegally.
The lawyer told the court that Eriko Nakano travelled to Bangladesh on July 18 and stayed in the Japanese Embassy in Bangladesh and tested Covid five times to see her children as per the condition set by her estranged husband.
She was allowed to see her children for few moments on July 27 at a place where she was taken by her former husband blindfolded. She was taken to her children by a car and was brought back to the place where she boarded the car.
Eriko Nakano told journalists on the court compound that she travelled to Bangladesh leaving behind another of her daughter, aged 6, in Japan.
She said that the couple, both physicians and US and Japanese citizens, got married in the USA on July 11, 2008 and Eriko Nakano applied for a divorce on January 18, 2021 when they were in Japan.
The couple gave birth to their first baby in 2010 and second baby in 2011 and the third one in 2014.
