The Bombay High Court has come down heavily on the Child Welfare Committee (Mumbai Suburban 2) for rejecting the application for custody filed by the biological father of a child and has given the panel 48 hours to reconsider the application and hand the child overto the father.
The child was abandoned by the mother, who was a minor at the time of child birth.
A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite-Dere and Gauri Godse, which was hearing a petition filed by the biological father seeking custody of his child, questioned the manner in which the CWC was conducting itself and asked if it was above the law.
The father, then 19, and mother, then 17, eloped to Karnataka in 2021 after she became pregnant, according to the plea. She delivered on November 26, 2021, the plea contended.
After they returned to Mumbai on March 4, 2022, the father was attested under POCSO on the basis of a complaint by the girl’s father.
The CWC, on March 7, 2022, sent the girl and the child to a shelter home, following which the girl surrendered the child to CWC.
As the youth’s parents did not receive a reply from the CWC for custody, he sought custody. He then approached the high court through advocate Ashish Dubey.
The CWC told the high court that the child was declared free for adoption on December 21, 2022, and on January 3 the Central Adoption Resources Authority (CARA) gave the child up for adoption.
CARA’s advocate told the court that the adoptive parents have handed the child to the adoption committee and the child is in a home. The CWC had then assured the hgh court that it will take an appropriate decision in the father’s custody application. However, it rejected the application, saying that he is an accused and it was in the “best interests of victim and the child”.
The high court bench, however, observed that this was highhandedness on the part of the CWC and asked why the CWC wanted to give the child’s custody to someone other than the biological father. “Look at the trauma and agony caused to the child!” said Justice-Dere.
The judge also questioned how could CWC, without taking consent from the father, hand over the child for adoption.
The bench then recorded statement of prosecutor Prajakta Shinde that the CWC will revoke its earlier order and reconsider it.
The high court has kept the matter on July 28.
