NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday said the offence of kidnapping was made out against a man who had taken away his toddler daughter to Dubai without the consent of the court or the mother, as he only had visitation rights and was not her lawful guardian.
The high court said the only persons who could consent to taking away the child were herself and the mother, and the father’s act of taking away the minor under a foreign passport and later changing her citizenship, passport and religion was “immoral” and “shocking”.
A bench of Justices Manmohan and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal sentenced the man to six months’ imprisonment for contempt of court for taking abroad his daughter without permission.“The child was taken out of India without the consent of this court, which is legally authorised to consent on behalf of the child. Accordingly, section 360 IPC (kidnapping) is attracted. His taking custody of the child is contrary to orders of a court and the same can never be conceived, by any reasonable person, to be ‘lawful custody’,” the bench said.
Rejecting the father’s plea, the court further said that he has shown no remorse for his conduct. In August 2019, when the girl was with the man, he took a flight to Bagdogra in West Bengal and crossed Nepal. He flew out from Kathmandu on Qatar Airways to Doha, then to Muscat and reached Dubai.
With agency inputs