The maternal grandfather of a two-year-old Lenasia girl at the centre of a bitter custody battle has handed himself to the police.
|||The maternal grandfather of a two-year-old Lenasia girl at the centre of a bitter custody battle has handed himself to the police.
The man, who cannot be named until he appears in court on Tuesday, stands accused of kidnapping Sabiyah Mahomed.
On Monday, his lawyer, Saleem Ebrahim, claimed his client was innocent.
Fatima Mahomed had told The Star she had raised her dead brother and sister-in-law’s daughter Sabiyah at her home in Lenasia almost since birth.
Tragically, her brother Sabir fatally shot his young wife Insiyah and himself in May last year.
Sabiyah was a few months old at the time and was in the room at the time of the shooting.
Mahomed then filed for adoption at the Johannesburg Family Court through a social worker, and said she had received the go-ahead for the child to live with her while the adoption process was continuing.
However, Mahomed alleges the child’s maternal grandfather went to her home in Lenasia in December, threatened her 18-year-old brother and helper at gunpoint and snatched the child.
Ebrahim said on Monday this was completely incorrect.
“Her own brother (the 18-year-old) was the one who took the child to Durban. She is not the natural custodian of the child – the grandparents are.
“The grandfather is not guilty of kidnapping. You can’t just adopt a child on the fly without informing existing family members. They (Mahomed’s side of the family) knew exactly where he (the grandfather) was. He wasn’t on the run,” he said.
Mahomed denied her brother had taken the child to her grandparents in Durban, saying he had been the one to give a statement to the police about the alleged kidnapping.
“We never denied their right to see the baby, but they were never interested in her,” she said.
Ebrahim said the fact that his client had handed himself over at the Moroka police station on Monday was further indication that he had nothing to hide and was innocent.
It also emerged on Monday that the grandfather had also filed for adoption of the girl in Durban last month, sometime after the child’s aunt had done so last year.
“The child will remain in Durban as it is not in her best interests to be here (Joburg). There’s a social worker on the case in Durban who is investigating possible neglect that the child might have suffered while living here,” Ebrahim added.
“Now I’m going to file an urgent high-court order for the grandfather to gain interim custody pending a court order on who should have custody,” he said.
The grandfather was due to appear in the Protea Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday. - The Star