BENGALURU: Child custody battles can be a tedious affair for both parents and custodians. But it’s the children who end up being the victims. Childline services in the city witness 7-8 cases a month where a parent wants to fight for custody of their child. However, such cases are sent to the family court.
S Vishalakshi, who was previously in-charge of NGO APSA Childline in Bengaluru said that both the Childline and Child Welfare Committee (CWC) do not wish to take up such cases which can be settled out of court. “The problem is that court cases take more than a year, so the child ends up being the victim,” she told TNIE.
Take the recent case of a 32-year-old widowed maid with two children who was living with her brother-in-law. She was in search of a stable job and since she was being abused by the man, she fled to her mother’s house with her children. “The childrens’ paternal uncle, along with the in-laws, visited the house and took them away. Since then, the mother has been fighting for custody,” says Vishalakshi. The CWC referred her to the Family Court where the case has been pending for the past six months, Vishalakshi added.
The chairperson of the CWC, Anjali Ramanna, said, “There are three issues that we need to consider — if there is an ongoing court case, if the left-out parent wants to fight for the child again despite a court order, and in certain cases, where we have observed the left-out party is the better custodian and make a recommendation to the court,” she explained.
In another recent case, a father had secured custody of his child through the court, but had to leave the child with the mother. “The father had left the child there for three years until the child had called the helpline 1098 and informed that she wanted to be with the father. We had to request the father to get a fresh order from the court since he had already violated the first order, which amounts to contempt of court,” Anjali said.
In some cases, the court gives an interim order until the final verdict, which is, however, after six months. “There are cases where Form-22 is filled with the background of the entire family and a report on care and protection for the child,” Anjali added. Other options are shelter homes depending on the severity of the case or a suo motu case registered by the CWC under Section 30 of the Juvenile Justice Act.
Senior advocate Jayna Kothari said that family courts lack a panel of social workers, counsellors and psychiatrists which can look deep into such issues. “More than physical harm, the children go through mental stress and require social workers to visit the homes and understand the child’s situation. In custody cases, the child is brought to the judge’s chamber and asked whom he/she want to be with. But that can be tutored too, and hence, psychiatrists are needed,” she said.