Eleven days after Bangalore techie Atul Subhash died by suicide, his mother, Anju Devi, on Friday filed a habeas corpus petition before the Supreme Court seeking a direction to all concerned parties to immediately trace and produce her grandson and grant his custody to her.
A two-judge Supreme Court bench comprising Justice BV Nagarathna and Justice N Kotiswar Singh issued notices to the governments of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka to act on the plea and fixed the matter for further hearing on January 7.
Anju Devi, in her petition copy, accessed by The New Indian Express, said that she was forced to move the SC after being highly aggrieved by the illegal detention of her four-year-old grandson at an unknown place and under an unknown person's custody.
"I seek the search and production of the minor child before this Court by the Respondent Police Authorities herein and upon production for a direction to hand over the custody of the said child to the Petitioner (Anju Devi), who is the paternal grandmother," her petition stated.
In the case on hand, the father has passed away and the mother has been arrested. Where her grandson is and under whose custody is unknown and so the Court should presume the child's custody to be unlawful and amounting to illegal detention, her petition observed.
As the paternal grandmother of the child, she was best suited to take care of the child now, the petition said.
She underlined that she had approached the apex court as she had been left with no other alternative.