KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- A court in the northern city of Ipoh on Thursday (July 25th) struck down the 2009 conversion of three Hindu children to Islam without their mother's knowledge, AFP reported.

The high court declared the conversion of Indira Gandhi's children, now aged five, 15 and 16, by their father to be unconstitutional.

"It is the first time ever that a child's conversion certificate has been quashed by a high court," Gandhi's lawyer K. Shanmuga told AFP, adding that the judge ruled that the father had failed to take the mother and children to Islamic authorities for their consent to the conversion.

Their mother faced losing custody of her children after her husband converted himself and the children without her knowledge, since under Malaysian sharia law, a non-Muslim parent cannot share custody of converted children.