An Indian couple in the U.S. has been forced to leave their house after their neighbours filed a lawsuit against them alleging their autistic son is a “public nuisance,” sparking outrage among parents of children with autism, according to a media report.

Vidyut Gopal, an engineer at a Silicon Valley company and Parul Agrawal, a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, were forced to leave their home of seven years in California’s Sunnyvale city, one of the major cities that make up Silicon Valley.

When neighbours complained about the child’s pulling children’s hair, biting a woman and other menacing behaviour, the couple hired caregivers, gave the boy special medication, and put him in therapeutic classes, The San Jose Mercury News reported on Thursday.

‘Public nuisance’



However, the Silicon Valley couple got slapped with a lawsuit that called their son a “public nuisance,” and ultimately drove them out of their home of seven years, the paper reported.

As Mr. Gopal and Ms. Agrawal are in the midst of a legal battle, it has sparked outrage among parents of children with autism, raising troubling questions about how to coexist with neighbours with special needs kids.

“This has been pretty devastating for us, but we are doing our best to cope with it,” Mr. Gopal said.