P Waytha Moorthy said although the mother, Loh Siew Hong, had agreed that the Perlis welfare department should temporarily take care of her children, they should be returned to her custody without “complications”.

“This is not a religious dispute. It is a clear case of a mother who had her children abducted by her estranged husband who is now in prison, allegedly on drug charges,” he said in a Facebook post today.

“Who else can care for and love these children if not their mother? This should not be seen through the lens of a religious dispute.”

He commended the Perlis religious authorities for rescuing the children from harm’s way and handing them to the police but said the children should no longer be kept from their mother.

Loh had asked for her children to be placed under the care of the social welfare department before a habeas corpus suit is heard at the High Court in Kuala Lumpur on Feb 21.

However, Waytha said the mother should not need a habeas corpus to begin with.

Last year, Loh filed for divorce and was granted full custody of her children. Police, however, had failed to recover them even after the Kuala Lumpur High Court ordered them to do so.

Loh said she lodged police reports about her missing children in three different states last year but was given the runaround, and has since discovered they were unilaterally converted to Islam.

She was allowed to spend time with her children, 14-year-old twin daughters and a 10-year-old son, at a government childcare facility in Jitra, Kedah today.