America
US court orders mediation over Indian couple's autistic son
Washington, Sep 24
A court in the US state of
California has ordered the Indian-origin parents of a boy with autism
and their neighbours into mediation, after a lawsuit was filed against
the Indian couple alleging that their son was a "public nuisance", a
media report said.
A Santa Clara county judge handed down the
order to defendants Vidyut Gopal, Parul Agrawal and complainants Kumaran
Santhanam, his wife Bindu, as well as Robert and Marci Flowers in view
of the negative precedent the case might set for families of children
who have developmental disabilities, Eyewitness News reported on
Wednesday.
"With great reluctance, we had to file this lawsuit
because we had to protect the safety of all of the children in the
neighbourhood," Santhanam was quoted as saying.
Last year, Gopal
and Agrawal were slapped with a lawsuit by their next-door neighbours
that claimed the couple did not do enough to prevent their autistic son
from assaulting their children, as well as other people in their
neighbourhood in Sunnyvale, one of the major cities that make up Silicon
Valley.
"My hope is that when we meet with the defendants, that
we can finally at long last come up with a workable solution for both
parties," said Robert Flowers.
Gopal is an engineer at a Silicon Valley company, while Agrawal is a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Centre.