SC: Keep police out of child custody battles

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday disagreed with the family court’s decision to involve police in a couple’s custody battle over their minor children, saying it was atrocious to involve police in such cases.A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta termed the Bhopal Family Court’s direction as unconstitutional as it asked the Gurgaon police chief to ensure that the child is handed over to the father, who lives in Madhya Pradesh.In this case, the husband and wife were both doctors and had been separated for many years. The family court passed the order on the plea of ​​the father, who alleged that she had illegally taken the child from Bhopal without the court’s prior permission, in clear violation of the conditions laid down in the order passed by the trial court in 2022.“This order is atrocious, unethical and unconstitutional. How can the police intervene in a custody case? This is not the way to decide a case. What jurisdiction does the family court in Bhopal have over the Gurgaon police commissioner? Using the police to obtain custody of a child is unacceptable,” the bench said. It directed the husband and wife to appear in court on Tuesday along with their children. The court said it would interact with them in court before passing any order.The family court in Bhopal revoked her custody and awarded custody of the child to the child’s father. The court found that the mother violated a previous consent order by failing to provide the father with access to the children, changing residences multiple times without notifying the father, and attempting to alienate the children from their father.In November last year, the Madhya Pradesh High Court confirmed the family court’s ruling, citing the child’s welfare and the findings of the Delhi High Court’s Mediation and Conciliation Center report which stated that the child had shown no resentment towards the father and that the mother’s behavior was problematic.