Her husband, a Chinese, left her, an Indian, to marry a Malay.

She is now alleging that the three children with her former Chinese husband were unlawfully converted to Islam on March 31 this year as it was done without her consent as the legal mother.

Her ex-husband died in early March this year and the children had been staying with their Malay stepmother since their father married her.

The Indian mother filed an appeal in the Kuala Lumpur High Court in order to get a court order to regain custody of the children since their father had passed away.

The order was successfully obtained on Sept 5 with the presence of the Malay wife in court.

However, three days after the order was obtained - on Sept 8 - a welfare centre from Cheras initiated proceedings under the Child Act 2001 claiming that the children were in need of protection.

As her late ex-husband and his Malay wife were staying in Kajang previously, the case initiated by the welfare centre was brought to the Kajang magistrate court.

The Kajang court then gave an order to the welfare centre to put all three children in the centre allegedly on suspicion that they were abused.

Did not meet kids

However, defence lawyer, K Shanmuga, who was appointed by the Indian mother in fighting the case against the welfare centre claimed that the mother has not seen her children since the father passed away.

"Although she (Indian mother) had obtained the order from the court to claim back her children, she did not manage to do so before the welfare centre took her children away," he said when met outside the courtroom today.

Therefore, he argued that it is impossible for the mother to abuse the children when she did not see them in the first place.

But the hearing of the case has been postponed to Nov 30 as the presiding magistrate Harmi Tharmi was absent today due to emergency family matters.

The court is to decide whether the children were physically abused as alleged by the welfare centre or to put the children under the custody of the Indian mother.

The children are now 15, 11 and 9 years old.

Their Chinese-Indian parents married under Hindu customary rituals. Their father left their mother to marry a Malay woman in 2004 and died two years later.