Saurabh Malik
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, July 7
In a significant judgment in child custody cases, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it clear that foreign citizenship can be considered significant from a grown-up’s prospect. However, future growth prospects cannot by themselves be conceived as the only criterion to determine a minor’s best interests.
Fight for custody
- The European citizenship/passport may be conceived as valuable from the prospect of a grown-up major
- Future growth prospects cannot by themselves be concluded to be the only parameters that would be in the best interests of a child
The ruling came on a habeas corpus petition filed by a mother. She was seeking the child’s custody on the grounds that he was a citizen of Italy. Justice Vinod S Bhardwaj asserted that there was prima facie no material to establish how vesting the custody with the petitioner-mother was in the child’s best interests.
Justice Bhardwaj observed that the child was stated to have been removed from the mother’s custody in March 2018. More than four years had elapsed before the petition was filed by the petitioner-mother. The only ground taken was that the child was a citizen of Italy. However, it may not by itself be in the child’s best interests. Uprooting the child from the country he belonged to, and which he had adopted, would itself have a serious impact on his psychology and well-being.
Justice Bhardwaj asserted: “The European citizenship/passport may be conceived as valuable from the prospect of a grown-up major. However, the said yardstick of financial security or future growth prospects cannot by themselves be concluded to be the only parameters that would be in the best interests of a child.” Justice Bhardwaj added that emotional, psychological and mental strength, along with family and social support, were equally essential for a child’s healthy development and growth.
Dismissing the plea, Justice Bhardwaj added that the minor child’s custody was with his father, who was the natural guardian under the Hindu Guardian and Wards Act, 1956. As such, the custody with the father could not be said to be illegal.
Before parting with the case, Justice Bhardwaj observed: “The constitutional courts should exercise adequate precaution to ensure the supremacy of the governing statute as well as the procedure and the remedies prescribed under the said statute, instead of taking recourse to bypassing the statutory provisions and remedies without any pressing need or without existence of any circumstance which would satisfy the judicial conscience that the ends of justice can be secured but only by exercise of the extraordinary writ jurisdiction”.
HC: Can't consider future growth prospects criterion to gauge minor's best interests
{$excerpt:n}
