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By Himanshu Bhatt

GEORGE TOWN (Nov 24, 2009) : A former inmate of a government welfare home who was converted to Islam as a child has denied a Welfare Department claim that it was her father who made her a Muslim when she was a year old.

S. Banggarma, 27, also showed photographic evidence that her father, the late Subramaniam Bangaraiah, was a practising Hindu till his late years, and said he had never mentioned about anyone in the family becoming a Muslim.

"I was made to sign a certificate to enter Islam when I was seven, after they placed me in the home. Why would they make me do that if I was already a Muslim?" she asked

At a press conference today, her lawyer Gooi Hsiao Leung said the department’s claim was contradictory to the conversion certificate dated Dec 28 1989 that she was made to sign.

"There cannot be two conversions," said Gooi, who is also the Kedah PKR Youth deputy chief.

Banggarma, who is named Siti Hasnah Vangarama Abdullah in her identity card, had last week described how she was unable to register her marriage to her Hindu husband, as she was converted along with three of her siblings at Rumah Bakti Kepala Batas 20 years ago. Banggarma was later separated from them at the home.

She ran away from the home at the age of 18. She later found her father who was living like a beggar.

Welfare Department director-general Meme Zainal Rashid responded by claiming Banggarma and her siblings were converted by her natural father on Nov 30, 1983.

The conversion acknowledgment letter by both her mother and father was filed with Islamic authorities in Rompin, Pahang, Meme said in a statement carried by the <i>Malaysiakini</i> web portal on Monday.

In response, Gooi said conversion of a minor was already "bad in law" and went against the Penang Islamic Council’s own enactment.

"What is important is for the Welfare Department to answer how they could have shockingly allowed a seven-year-old child in their care to sign the ‘Sijil Akuan Masuk Islam’ in 1989," he said.

He noted that Section 80 of the Penang Administration of Islamic Affairs Enactment 1993 provides that no child under the age of 18 can be converted to Islam without the parents’ permission.

Gooi also disagreed with Penang State Islamic Council (MAIPP) president Shabudin Yahaya who compared the case to the apostasy of Tan Ean Huang or Siti Fatimah Abdullah.

He said the facts of the cases are "poles apart".

"Fatimah’s case arose out of her own conversion into Islam arising from a marriage she contracted with an Iranian Muslim. Banggarma’s conversion in itself at the age of seven without parental consent is right from the beginning, bad in law and ‘void ab initio’ (invalid at the outset)."

Gooi said he would contact the department to furnish the records Meme had claimed.

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