Decide on courts’ jurisdiction: Gerakan

PETALING JAYA: Gerakan has asked the government to come up with a clear decision on the jurisdiction of the civil and Syariah courts in the light of the case of S. Deepa who was given custody of her two children by the Seremban High Court last Tuesday.
The children had been earlier handed to her former husband, Izwan Abdullah, by a syariah court.
Its president, Datuk Mah Siew Keong, in a text message to theSun, said that if the government did not come up with an answer to such matters, there will be many more such problems in future as the country had both civil and syariah courts.
"The right thing to do is that the religion of the children must be the common religion at the time of marriage of the parents. In Deepa's case, both husband and wife were non- Muslims at the time of marriage. Custody should belong to the mother."
Meanwhile, DAP's national legal bureau chairman, Gobind Singh Deo, said Parliament should legislate a law to resolve the issue of the two-court system in the country.
He said the legal systems seem to have equal jurisdiction but they overlap in their jurisdiction.
He said the Deepa case was a prime example of this overlap in that the civil court had granted her custo-dial rights over her children, Mithran, six and Sharmila, nine, while the father had the same custodial rights granted earlier by a syariah court.
"We have two court orders and both are applicable," he added.
Last Wednesday, Mithran was allegedly taken from her by her former husband although the High Court had granted custodial rights to her.

Women Aid's Organisation (WAO) executive director Ivy Josiah said police had to address the manner in which violence was used to remove Mithran from Deepa. She said police should also be involved as Deepa had obtained an Interim Protection Order.