Vivek with his adoptive mother Meena; (above) his biological parents Salim and Jebunisa. (PTI)

Ahmedabad, July 24: A court has dismissed a Muslim couple’s plea for custody of their son who has been raised by a Hindu family since he was lost in the 2002 riots.

Muzaffar Shaikh, who is now nine but was only two-and-a-half when he went missing from slain Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri’s house here on February 28, 2002, told the metropolitan court yesterday he wanted to stay with his adoptive parents.

Muzaffar’s parents, Salim Shaikh and Jebunisa, had sought refuge in Jafri’s Gulbarg Society apartment when the rioters arrived. The boy was among the 31 who went missing after the massacre in the complex.

The Shaikhs, who had been searching for their son ever since, found him about a year and a half ago, being raised by Vikram and Meena Patni in Saraspura, about 4km from the Gulbarg flats. A crime branch constable had found the kid after the complex rampage and handed him over to the childless Patnis, his relatives.

The child now goes by the name Vivek Patni, said Teesta Setalvad of the Citizens for Justice and Peace. “We had come across the details of the boy while working on the cases of Muslim parents who lost their kids during the riots. Our investigation revealed the Shaikhs’ son was alive.”

Setalvad claimed the child’s whereabouts were known about a year and a half ago but Gujarat police were not informed because she “did not trust” the force, accused of abetting rioters during the communal flare-up.

Setalvad did send an intimation on May 29 this year, but to the Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team, which carried out a DNA test on the boy on June 12. The samples matched that of the Shaikhs’, prompting the couple to lodge the custody case.

Meena refused to part with the child, after which the judge asked the boy whether he wanted to go back to his real parents. He refused. Setalvad claimed the Hindu couple had promised to return the child when his real parents were found but changed their mind later. She blamed the police for failing to bring the child back to his biological parents. The constable’s act of giving the boy to his childless relatives amounted to kidnapping, she alleged.

At the same time, Setalvad suggested that she didn’t want the child to suffer any trauma. “After all, Muzaffar has been living with Meena for the last six years. The child must have got attached to her. But the police are duty-bound to restore the child to his real parents.”