HYDERABAD: Child Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting (CRISP), a Bangalore-based NGO dealing with disputes related to children’s custody, today urged the Centre and State governments to bring necessary changes in the laws so that both parents have equal access to children in case of custodial disputes.
CRISP also wanted the governments to make shared parenting mandatary.
Addressing a mediaconference here, founder and president of CRISP Kumar V Jahgirdar, himself fighting for equal access to his daughter from his estranged wife Chetana (now wife of Anil Kumble), demanded that the government create special courts for speedy disposal of child custody cases. Laws in the country were heavily loaded against men and misuse of anti-dowry and other women’s protection laws had become a well-recognised problem, he said.
Annually about 75,000 dowry harassment cases were filed across the country and in a majority of them the accused were held not guilty. For instance, in 2006, 1,37,180 persons were arrested under Sec 498A but 4,812 of them were not even chargesheeted. Out of 62,746 chargesheted, 81 per cent (50,895) were found innocent.
US-based scientist Ravichandran Voora, a CRISP member, said child rights were important and a separate ministry was needed to take care of child affairs. As it had been tagged with the women’s ministry, which by default was run by women, men were deprived of a fair deal in custodial cases, he charged.
He cited his own case to buttress his argument.
He had divorced his wife Vijayshree with whom he had a six-year-old son, Aditya. In June 2007 Vijayashree took his consent to take the boy to India for vacation.
Upon arrival in India, she absconded with the kid. In the past 21 months the kid had been deprived of a home and not been given any education, he said.
The New York court gave sole legal and physical custody of the kid to him on September 14, 2007, he claimed.
Ravichandran felt that the judiciary in India was heavily biased against men and that was why despite putting in so many efforts he could not succeed in getting the custody of his son.