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A grieving dad who lost his first-born son in a house blaze started by his former partner is taking his fight over custody laws to Westminster.

Jai Joshi, four, was killed alongside his mum Janma Joshi, 40, when a fire broke out at their flat in Tuebrook in May 2014.

An inquest ruled that Ms Joshi, 40, deliberately set the apartment ablaze after failing to return Jai to his dad, Paresh Patel, who had full custody.

Mr Patel, 44, is campaigning for the law to change to ensure that court orders on custody are enforced to protect other families from similar tragedies.

He is due to meet Children and Families Minister Edward Timpson.

Mr Patel, from Hutton, near Preston, told the Lancashire Evening Post: “I’ve been campaigning to get the law changed to make court orders enforceable, as I found out through the death of my son they are not necessarily enforceable.

“What I want is to have all court orders that are written, particularly for children from the family court, to have enforcement included as standard, so if police or social services go down and they are refusing to hand them back, they would have the authority to remove them and give them back to the person who has full custody.

“At the moment a standard court order doesn’t have an enforcement paragraph in it, so in effect you would need to go back to court to get your child back.

“I can’t understand the logic in that.”

Newsagent Mr Patel had custody of Jai for more than two years and claims his son was let down by the authorities after his mother failed to return him after having him for a week during the school Easter holidays.

He says despite desperate attempts by him to get Jai back by contacting police, the courts and social services, Jai remained in his mother’s care for four weeks and out of school for two-and-a-half weeks, culminating in his death.

Mr Patel has already launched a petition for his campaign.

He said: “This isn’t about Jai now.

“This is about protecting other children and saving time and money for everybody, because the cost of going back to court just to get your own child back seems ridiculous to me.

“If you fall out with your ex-partner, you’ve got to hire a solicitor and go back to court.

“It’s about other children. Obviously I can’t get Jai back, but this is why I’ve been campaigning for it, to try to help the organisations that are designed to protect children do their jobs properly.

“All I’m thinking is this would just assist the authorities to do the job more effectively, without having to go through more red tape which is unnecessary.

“All I can do is go and put the case forward, and it’s up to the minister to look into it.”