The Makkal Sakthi movement has hired a private investigator to help kindergarten teacher M Indira Gandhi to locate her estranged Muslim convert husband, K Patmanathan, and the couple’s one-year-old daughter Prasana Diksa.

indra gandhi 170409 04 The movement, which stemmed from the outlawed Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), will also mobilise thousands of its active supporters to launch a nationwide hunt for Patmanathan.

Makkal Sakthi supporters in Johor Bahru have also been put on high alert to look out for Patmanathan, 40, if he crosses the Johor causeway to Singapore.

Apart from it, the movement will also print some 10,000 'missing person' posters and paste them across the country to enable supporters and sympathisers to look for Patmanathan.

These strategies were adopted at a Makkal Sakthi Perak branch meeting in Ipoh last night.

Some 30 Makkal Sakti local leaders and Indira attended the meeting chaired by newly appointed branch leader P Ramesh, who said the movement would fork out its own funds to assist the mother of three.

"We cannot afford to waste anymore time and rely on the police. We will do it ourselves in our own way to help Indira to get back her daughter and save the other children from her errant husband," he told Malaysiakini today.

Court grants custody

Last week, the Ipoh High Court granted Indira custody of all her three children, who were converted by their father without her knowledge on April 12, pending the full custody hearing on May 12.

The older children - Tevi Darsiny, 12 and Karan Dinesh, 11 - were in the care of their mother from the beginning. The court ordered that the youngest child, Prasana, which is in her father's care to be returned to the mother.

However, despite the court order to return the toddler, the father, who has since the conversion assumed the name Mohd Ridzuan Abdullah, has gone missing.

According to Indira, the police informed her that they visited Patmanathan mother's house to look for the child, who was said to be in her grandmother's care, on Friday but return empty-handed.

Indira has claimed that her husband had informed her that he was leaving for Singapore with their youngest child and will not return her despite the court order.

The Perak DAP and Malaysia Hindu Sangam (MHS) announced that they have printed some 5,000 posters with the photo of Patmanathan and Prasana to help Indira locate them.

The life of the 34-year-old Hindu mother took a turn for the worse after discovering that her husband, had converted to Islam last month and converted their children without her knowledge and consent.

He also took custody of the youngest child without getting a mutual agreement and obtained a Syariah Court order to gain custody of his two older children.

She claimed that her husband had converted their two older children without their presence and by using their birth certificates.

London-based Hindraf leader P Waythamoorthy meanwhile, called on the immigration authorities to publicly clarify on whether or not Patmanathan had fled the country.