The shocking story of a mother’s fight against an entire country to get her children back will soon be playing in theaters and on the big screen.
The next film ‘Mrs. Chatterjee Vs Norway’ with Rani Mukerji is based on the true story that shocked the world in 2012.
The creators of Mrs. Chatterjee Vs Norway released the first trailer for the film on Thursday which features Mukerji in the lead role, a strong mother who defies the Norwegian government to give birth to her two children.
The trailer opens with Mrs. Chatterjee (Mukerji) enjoying her time in Oslo with her husband and two children, Shubh and Shuchi. Life was good until the day government officials came and took Chatterjee’s children away from her. The trailer charts the ensuing breakdown, emotional turmoil, and a mother’s plea to be reunited with her children.
While the trailer gives us a glimpse of the film that will be released on March 17, this is the story of Sagarika Chakraborty whose horrific experience made headlines all over the world.
A violent fight between an Indian couple and a Norwegian couple in 2011 where child welfare workers called Barnevarne kidnapped their two children and put them in a foster home.
Chakraborty had not left Birati in West Bengal before leaving Norway with her geophysicist husband Anurup Bhattacharya. The couple’s life was turned upside down when Child Protective Services (CWS) took their children away due to “neglect and emotional disturbance”. They must be held in custody until they reach the age of 18.
The woman, then in her early twenties, was described as unfit to care for her children. This led to two years of fierce fighting between a Birati woman and an entire nation. Her power, brutality, and the pain of the mother forced human rights activists and even the Indian government to intervene to alleviate the situation.
During this long period, the CWS sent the children to India in April 2012 after her marriage failed.
But she still hasn’t seen her children. In India, the children are in the care of the paternal uncle and Kulti because the CWS called Chakraborty “unfit to take care of her children”. This led to another fight as she ran from one part of the world to another, from the court to the experts, to prove that she had the mental capacity to take care of her children.
After what must have been an eternity, the Calcutta High Court handed over the children to Chakraborty in January 2013.
“My son had developmental issues while my daughter was still breastfeeding when I had them torn. Imagine my future at that time,” she told Times of India in an exclusive August 2022 interview.
Now, all eyes are watching whether the director Ashima Chibber can capture the situation and suffering of a grieving mother on screen in the best possible way. We will meet only on March 17.
