Norway child abuse row: Indian couple convicted; father gets 18 months in jail, mother 15

Oslo: An Oslo court on Tuesday convicted the Indian couple from Andhra Pradesh who were facing charges of child abuse. The father was sentenced to 18 months and the mother to 15 months in jail by the court after being convicted of burning and hitting their seven-year-old son with belt.

The family of the couple said that they will appeal against the conviction in a higher court.

The Norway police on Monday had claimed that the couple from Hyderabad facing physically abused their seven-year-old son. Speaking to CNN-IBN, Oslo police official Kurt Lir said that the charges against the Vallabhanenis are from 2007 to March 2012. Lir also added that the child has burn marks and scars on his body.

According to the information with the Indian Embassy in Oslo, Chandrashekar Vallabhaneni, a software professional, and his wife Anupama were taken into custody by the police in Oslo last week. The police arrested the TCS employee nine months after the child complained to his school teachers that his parents were threatening to send him back to India for his acts, Chandrasekhar's nephew V Sailender, who is in Hyderabad, claimed.

The boy was found wetting his pants in the school bus which was reported to his father, who in turn "threatened" the child that he would be sent back to India if he repeated that again, Sailender said, adding the boy was also found bringing toys from school.

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