16-05-2025
Fractured season finale: Good news at last
It began with a single email.
In November 2023, Joris de Bres, a former New Zealand Human Rights and Race Relations Commissioner, wrote to Newsroom's investigations editor Melanie Reid with the subject line: 'Separated by the State'.
De Bres described how he'd been helping an Auckland-based couple who had arrived in New Zealand from India to make a life for themselves in what they called 'the dream country'.
What followed could only be described as a dystopian nightmare: a mother jailed, their baby put into foster care and both parents facing deportation without their daughter.
The whole story is examined in detail in DELVE's latest podcast investigation, Fractured, which takes listeners deep inside the bureaucracy to show exactly what happens when a family is trapped by the full weight of government agencies working in lockstep.
'We set out to discover whether the baby at the centre of our Fractured investigation was put into a foster home and her mother sent to prison based on a flawed diagnosis. We ended up plowing head first into a scandal of international proportions,' says Reid.
Throughout the making of the podcast, it seemed as though there was no light at the end of the tunnel, 'it was just more bad news on top of more bad news'.
'It's a pretty tough listen at times, but for those who have never experienced something like this it shows inch by inch what it's truly like to be in a situation you never ever imagined could happen to you.'
The father at the centre of the case, Ravi (not his real name), told Reid in their first interview in 2023: 'I came here for a better future – a better future for my family, to grow myself here, find a better job and make a happy life here. Now we are living as if we are dead.'
Eighteen months later, and the release of the final episode of Fractured Season 2 reveals some great news at last.
'Overwhelming' evidence
Four years ago, the mother at the centre of the case, who we call Zita, was convicted of intentionally hurting her infant daughter. At her sentencing, the judge described the medical evidence as 'overwhelming'.
During Zita's three-week trial, four doctors from Starship Hospital told the jury the injuries her baby had suffered were non-accidental and 'abusive head trauma', the rebranded term that replaced 'shaken baby syndrome'.
No expert medical witnesses appeared for the mother's defence. She was found guilty and sent to prison for two years and seven months. Zita has always maintained she did not, and would not ever, hurt her daughter, who we call Baby K.
The pediatrician from Starship Hospital's child abuse unit, which diagnosed the then-eight-week-old Baby K's injuries as non-accidental, did so less than 24 hours after she had been admitted to hospital. Every authority has fallen in behind that diagnosis since then.
In the intervening years, the little girl was put into four different foster homes, and Oranga Tamariki would not allow her father – who has no convictions – to regain custody of his child, despite his repeated requests.
On the day Zita was released from prison after serving almost her entire sentence, Oranga Tamariki secured a court order to keep Baby K in New Zealand under the care of the state.
Zita and Ravi leave court. Photo: Supplied
On top of this, Zita faced imminent deportation back to India, and because Ravi's visa was tied to his wife's, he too faced deportation – which would, in essence, orphan their daughter.
Over the past year and a half, Melanie Reid and her team have been conducting extensive inquiries into this complex case for Fractured.
In the course of that investigation, Reid secured Baby K's high-resolution 3D CT scans, x-rays, birth records and fetal heart monitoring tracings, and engaged four top-end international medical specialists to review them.
'International medical experts cost tens of thousands of dollars so there were a lot of hurdles for us to overcome. But we wanted the top people in their fields with no agendas, who were not subject to circular reasoning or institutional bias,' said Reid.
The Fractured investigation approached experts in genetics, neurosurgery, obstetrics and neuropathology from Canada, Norway, the Netherlands and the United States.
'We of course did not know when we got the medical files reviewed if they would come back for or against the mother at the centre of this case.'
They each wrote a formal report and provided evidence that the likely causes of Baby K's injuries were related to her labour and delivery, and her severely low levels of vitamin D.
This new evidence casts serious doubt over Zita's conviction.
The CCRC
Along the way, Reid and her team did something no journalist has done before in NZ – they teamed up with de Bres and made a submission on behalf of the mother to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which included the evidence from the international experts.
Set up in 2020, the commission reviews cases in which there is a potential miscarriage of justice or unsafe conviction, and can refer them back to an appeal court.
'It is not usual for us as journalists to be making submissions to the CCRC, but in this case I felt like we had no choice,' says Reid.
'This mother had her baby uplifted at 10 weeks old and her child is now six. The removal of her child and her subsequent conviction is based on medical evidence that we can now prove is flawed.
'There is growing concern internationally among medical and legal experts about the misdiagnosis or the over-diagnosis of non-accidental injury, and New Zealand is no exception.'
Since Fractured was published, Reid and her team have been approached by other families who have also been affected by this diagnosis, including a farming family from Central Otago, a father currently imprisoned in Auckland and another young family from the South Island.
They will feature in the upcoming season 3 of Fractured.
Good news at last
A year after Zita's release from prison, and after much effort from de Bres, Oranga Tamariki began allowing Zita regular supervised access with her daughter.
'It is so amazing. She's so happy. I'm so happy when she's here. She say I'm the best mum,' Zita tells Reid with a smile.
During this time, Zita had applied for refugee status with the Immigration Protection Tribunal, which turned it down, which she then appealed. While awaiting the outcome of the appeal, the ever-present threat of deportation meant all ground she was gaining with her daughter was going to collapse if she was sent back to India for good.
On April 14, at the Family Court in Auckland, following years of ongoing appearances, the orders relating to Baby K were discharged.
This means not only have the restrictions preventing her from leaving the country been lifted, but Baby K is officially no longer under the care of the state and custody has been handed back to her parents.
More than six years after their daughter was uplifted by the state, Baby K is now back with Zita and Ravi.
But that's not all.
Just days before the mother was set to be removed from New Zealand, Associate Minister of Immigration Chris Penk intervened, cancelling her deportation order and issuing her a 12-month work visa.
'I have decided to cancel Zita's deportation liability and grant her a special direction under section 17 of the Immigration Act 2009 for her convictions in relation to the injuries sustained by her daughter,' Penk wrote in his decision.
'This will allow her to remain in New Zealand while her application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission is assessed.'
Penk wrote that he made his decision after carefully considering the supporting letters and documentation.
(As always, it seems with this case, it comes with a snag – Immigration NZ has issued Ravi a new visa; however unlike his previous visas, it does not allow him to work.)
In the last piece of good news, the Criminal Cases Review Commission emailed to say it had accepted Reid and de Bres' submission for review, which paves the way for a potential referral to an appeal court.
For Zita and Ravi, simply being a family again is most important of all, expressed in an email Ravi sent to Reid and de Bres:
'Thanks you very much to all of you from the bottom of my heart,' wrote Ravi. 'If all of you were not in our life then perhaps this day will never come in our life. After all your hard work and efforts we got our daughter back. What seemed impossible to us, you all thought about it and saw it. Thanks you very much to all of you on behalf of our entire family.'
Listen to both seasons of Fractured on our podcast channel DELVE.
Since 2023, DELVE has produced more than 90 episodes across four award-winning investigative podcast series. With more than 5.5 million downloads, DELVE sits in the top 0.1 percent most downloaded podcasts in the world.
Fractured has also been nominated for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast at the 2025 NZ Radio and Podcast Awards.
