Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said the government has yet to arrive at a decision on whether police will act to resolve custody tussles in religious conversion cases.

He said this in response to his colleague Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Nancy Shukri who called on police to retrieve S Deepa's son from her Muslim convert ex-husband as rightful custody is hers.

"We have no decision yet. I will discuss with her (Nancy) and also the Attorney-General's Office on what line of action to take," he told a press conference in Cheras today.

Zahid's latest remarks appears to be a softening of stance after backing police refusal to act in April.

Inspector-general of police Khalid Abu Bakar had said police did not want to get involved in the tussle, claiming that there were conflicting rulings between the Syariah Court and Seremban High Court on rightful custody.

However, despite the Syariah Court earlier granting custody to Izwan Abdullah, the Seremban High Court subsequently ruled that their six-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter were products of a civil marriage and granted custody to the mother.

Izwan defied the court decision and forcibly took their son from the mother after losing the case at the Seremban High Court in April.

Ipoh court spells it out

Possibly pre-empting a repeat of such excuses from the police, the Ipoh High Court in a separate case specifically instructed them to issue an arrest warrant for contempt and ruled that the Civil Court's decision superseded the Syariah Court.

It involved the daughter of M Indira Gandhi converted to Islam without  her knowledge by ex-husband K Pathmanathan @ Mohd Ridzuan Abdullah.

The Ipoh High Court had in 2010 ruled that the six-year-old girl should go with the mother but to date, the father has refused to return the child.

This prompted the court, on May 30, to declare Mohd Ridzuan to be in contempt of court and specifically ordered police to arrest him if he failed to fulfil yesterday's noon deadline, which he had defied.

Ahmad Zahid said he has been informed of this latest court decision but has yet to look into the details.