Ahmedabad: What’s in a name? Too much perhaps. Fourteen years after the Gulberg society massacre, the biological parents of Muzaffar Sheikh, have much qualms about losing their son, not to death but to a new identity — Vivek Patni.
When one of the most tragic events in modern India unfolded in Ahmedabad’s Gulberg housing society in 2002, Zaibunnisa and Salim Sheikh lost traces of their two-year-old son Muzaffar in the chaos that claimed 69 lives.
Rescued by a constable, Muzaffar was handed over to Vikram Patni and his wife Veena Patni, who raised the boy as their own in Saraspur sector of Ahmedabad.
According to media reports, the boy continued to live with Veena, after Vikram’s death, and grew up as Vivek Patni, along with their four other children.
Veena sells fish and vegetables near Soni ni Chali in Rakhial.
A long and tedious legal battle ensued in 2008 after the Sheikhs traced their son to Vivek, as his foster family was not willing to give him up. Matters were made complicated as the child hardly recollected his childhood in the Gulberg society.
Though DNA tests proved Zebunnisa and Salim Sheikh to be the child’s biological parents, the Gujarat High Court refused them Vivek’s custody, and asked the relevant parties to sort out the issue amicably in view of the child’s interest.
Four years since, Vivek has been visiting his biological parents every Sunday.
But the arrangement is far from functional, as both parties agree that Vivek is less inclined to meet his biological parents, and has not visited them in the past six to eight months.
“If I remember correctly, Vivek has not been visiting them for the past six months,” Madhuben Patni, Vivek’s aunt through his foster parents, was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
"I last saw my boy eight months ago. On various pretexts, he is not sent to my home. He, too, does not seem keen to live with us. Obviously he is under her influence," media reports quoted Salim Sheikh.
