NRI doctor re-incarcerated for parental kidnapping

WASHINGTON, September 17 2004
UNI

An Indian doctor was taken into federal custody for a second time for failing to return his children whom he kidnapped from their mother in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1997.

United States attorney Michael J. Sullivan announced in Boston on Thursday that the 48-year old Dr Fazal Raheman of Nagpur was taken into federal custody by the order of U.S. District Judge Patti B Saris for violating the court's order to return his children whom he kidnapped and brought to India more than six years ago.

Raheman was convicted of international parental kidnapping and wire tapping in March 2002, and was sentenced to 3 years' imprisonment, to be followed by 3 years of supervised release.

The doctor was released from prison last February, and has been serving his term of supervised release at a residence in Blackstone, Massachusetts.

Among the terms of his supervised release was the requirement that Raheman effect the return of his two children - now 12 and 8 years old- to their mother in the United States.

At a revocation hearing on Thursday, Judge Saris found not only that Raheman had failed to return the children, but had provided false information to an Indian court in which child custody proceedings had been initiated.

Judge Saris concluded that the written statements made by Raheman to the Indian court mischaracterized the proceedings in the United States, and inhibited the likelihood that the children would be returned to the United States.

A sentencing hearing on the supervised release revocation is scheduled for October 18. Raheman faces up to two years' in prison to be followed by an additional year of supervised release for failing to return the children.

Evidence presented during the original jury trial in 2002 proved that Raheman kidnapped his children the day before thanksgiving in 1997, after telling his estranged spouse that he was going to take them to a museum.

The children, who were living with their mother in Cambridge while Raheman was living in Burlington, Massachusetts, were five years and seventeen months old at the time of the kidnapping.

According to court documents, the evidence indicated that Raheman drove to New York that afternoon, missed a flight to India that night, but caught a flight to Bombay on the night of November 27, 1997.

The evidence also indicated that Raheman was assisted in the kidnapping by a female relative who had come to the United States the week before for the purpose of removing the children to India. Neither child has returned to the United States since 1997.

The evidence presented during the trial also demonstrated that Raheman had tapped the children's mother's Cambridge telephone, had installed a video camera in her apartment, and had hired a private detective agency to follow her.

The evidence proved that Raheman recorded more than 100 hours of his estranged spouse's private telephone conversations which he later used in court in India to justify his kidnapping of the children.