The upcoming film ‘Mrs. Chatterjee Vs Norway’ starring Rani Mukerji has been inspired by a real story that shook the world in 2012.
The makers of ‘Mrs. Chatterjee Vs Norway’ released the film’s first trailer on Thursday which shows Mukerji playing the lead, a fierce mother going against the Norwegian government to get her two kids back.
The film’s trailer starts by showing how Mrs Chatterjee (Rani Mukerji) is enjoying her happy life with her husband and two kids, Shubh and Shuchi in Norway. Life is good until one day, the government officials come and snatch Chatterjee’s kids away from her.
The breakdown, the roller coaster of emotions, a mother’s crying plea to reunite with her little children is played out well by Mukerji, who gets in the skin of a demanding character.
While the trailer gives us a glimpse into the film which is set to release on March 17, here’s the true story of Sagarika Chakraborty, whose heart-breaking story made headlines across the world.
The infamous battle of the Indian couple against Norway took place in 2011 in which the child welfare service, called Barnevarne, took away their two kids and placed them in foster care.
Sagarika had never stepped outside of Birati, West Bengal before moving out of the country to Norway with her geophysicist husband Anurup Bhattacharya. The couple’s happy life was turned upside down when CWS took their kids on the group of “neglect and emotional disconnect”. The children were to remain in custody until they turned 18.
The woman, then in her late twenties, was called mentally unfit to care for her children.
This led to an intense two-year-long legal battle between a simple woman from Birati and a whole country. Sagarika’s strength, fierceness and a mother’s pain roped in rights activists and even the Indian government.
During this long period, Sagarika’s children were sent to India in April 2012 by the CWS while her marriage broke down.
But she still couldn’t reunite with her kids. In India, the children were in paternal uncle’s custody in Kulti as the CWS had branded Sagarika “unfit to care for children”.
This led to another fight as Sagarika ran from one part of the world to another, from courtrooms to specialists, to establish that she was mentally fit to take care of her own children.
Still from the upcoming film.
After what must have felt like an eternity, the Calcutta High Court handed over the children to Sagarika in January 2013.
“My son had some developmental issues while my daughter was still being breastfed when they were snatched away from me. Imagine my plight at that time,” recounted Sagarika to The Times of India in August 2022 exclusive interview.
Now all eyes are on ‘Mrs. Chatterjee Vs Norway’ with Rani Mukerji in the lead. The actress has shown her versatility as an actress time and again, so we can expect Mukerji to do complete justice with the story.