Sharif Imran along with his two daughters comes out of Supreme Court in Dhaka on Tuesday following a court order to stay with his daughters and their Japanese mother Nakano Erico at a rented flat at Gulshan for 15 days. — New Age photo

The High Court on Tuesday asked an estranged couple to live in a rented flat in Dhaka together for 15 days with their two children, who were brought to Dhaka by their Bangladeshi-origin father without the consent of the Japanese mother.

The court also asked the director general of the Department of Social Services to assign a deputy director to monitor the activities of the couple, Imran Sharif and Eriko Nakano as the latter refused to stay in the house with Imran, saying that she might be subjected to domestic violence.

Eriko Nakano’s lawyer Shishir Manir said that his client had applied for divorce sought on January 28 with a Japanese family court and she was unwilling to live in the same house with her husband.

Lawyer Fawzia Karim, who appeared for the father, said that the children do not want to part with their father.

The court also asked the Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Criminal Investigation Department to deploy female police to counsel the couple and ensure their security and that of their children aged between 9 and 11 at the house in Gulshan 1.

The couple agreed to contribute equally towards the rent of the four-bed apartment in the posh area of Gulshan.

The court also asked the Criminal Investigation Department to escort the couple and the children from the Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Victim Support Centre at Tejgaon to the Gulshan house.

The CID took the children into their custody after rescuing them from the custody of their father on August 22 and kept them in the Victim Support Centre.

Later on August 23, the High Court allowed the mother to visit the children in the morning and the father to visit in the afternoon.

The estranged woman prayed to the court to allow her to stay in another house near the Japanese Embassy with the children with the visiting right of their father for 15 days.

The court expected a ‘good settlement’ among the couple during the 15-day period and asked the couple’s lawyers to bring to the notices of the court if there was any problem during the period.

The court set September 16 for further hearing of the writ petition filed by the Japanese woman on August 18 challenging the legality of bringing the children to Bangladesh on February 18 without her consent and seeking guardianship and custody of the children.

An online bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Md Mostafizur Rahman issued the ruling after hearing face-to-face the statements of the couple and their children separately at the judges’ chamber in the morning.

The bench said that it issued the ruling considering the welfare of the children.

The CID took the children into their custody and kept them in the Victim Support Centre on the plea that they would be brought before the High Court on August 31 for the hearing of the writ petition of the mother who arrived in Bangladesh on July 18.

The father returned to Bangladesh from Japan on February 18, along with the children while the hearings on a family lawsuit filed by their mother remained pending with a Japanese court over the custody of the children.

Since then the children had been staying with their father. Meanwhile, On May 31, the Japanese court ordered him to hand over the custody of the children to the mother.

The lawyer said that Bangladesh-origin national married the Japanese national under the Muslim Family Law Ordinance in Japan on July 11, 2008, after she had converted to Islam.

The physician couple, both also US citizens, gave birth to their first baby in the USA and the second and third ones in Japan.