Indian diaspora groups in Germany stage protest for baby Ariha Shah
Indian diaspora in Germany staged a protest in Frankfurt in an appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help reunite baby Ariha Shah, currently in German state services custody, with her Indian parents. Waving the Indian national flag and holding banners reading “Modiji Save Ariha!” and “Ariha is Indian”, the group braved the rain on Saturday to make an appeal for the two-year-old toddler to be returned to her parents Bhavesh and Dhara Shah.
The parents have been fighting for their daughter since September 2021, when the German authorities intervened amid allegations of harassment. “Today, Indian community in Frankfurt, Germany held protests against the injustice happening with Indian baby Ariha in Germany,” said a tweet from the «Save Ariha» account, along with videos.
In December last year, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had raised the issue during discussions with his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock, and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) addressed the matter again at a recent weekly briefing as an «important and sensitive» issue. “The child is an Indian national and she was placed in the custody of Germany's Youth Welfare Office of the (Jugendamt) on 23rd September 2021, when she was seven months old.
She has now been in foster care for more than 20 months,” said MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi in a statement last month. “Our efforts have been guided by the best interests of the child, which we believe can be fully realised only when she is in her home country, where her socio-cultural rights can be safeguarded.
Accordingly, we have been requesting Germany to return the child to India. «Our Embassy has been repeatedly requesting German authorities to ensure that Ariha's connection with our cultural,
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