Mother moves Bombay High Court to be heard in child’s custody battle

In an ongoing battle for the custody of an 18-month-old child, a mother has approached the Bombay High Court seeking that the custody of child is not given to the father. Advocate Flavia Agnes, who also runs the non-governmental organisation, Majlis, which seeks to protect women and children’s rights, appeared for the mother on August 1 before a Division Bench of Justices Revati Mohite-dere and Gauri Godse, saying the mother wanted to be heard in a plea filed by the father seeking that the court direct the Child Welfare Committee to allow him to take custody of the child.

In an ongoing battle for the custody of an 18-month-old child, a mother has approached the Bombay High Court seeking that the custody of child is not given to the father.

Advocate Flavia Agnes, who also runs the non-governmental organisation, Majlis, which seeks to protect women and children’s rights, appeared for the mother on August 1. Ms. Agnes appeared before a Division Bench of Justices Revati Mohite-dere and Gauri Godse and said the mother wanted to be heard in a plea filed by the father seeking that the court direct the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) to allow him to take custody of the child.

On July 26, the Bombay High Court had directed the CWC to ensure that an 18-month-old boy who was given up for adoption by his mother be handed over to his biological father. The Bench on August 1 asked if the mother wanted to assert her right over the child. Ms. Agnes firmly refused and said the mother felt that the child should not be handed over to the father.

Ms. Agnes had also requested the court to hear the matter in the judges’ chamber, not in open court, as it involved a case under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. However, the court had rejected the request. The mother, then a 17-year-old, had eloped with 19-year-old Ramu Gadivdar (the biological father) on October 1, 2021, to Karnataka from Mumbai to hide her pregnancy from her parents. Soon thereafter, her father filed a police complaint under the POCSO. On November 26, 2021, she gave birth to a boy and the CWC had sent both the mother and the child to St. Catherine’s Home in Mumbai. On March 5, 2022, Mr. Gadivdar was arrested and granted bail the next month.

The mother then initiated proceedings to send the child for adoption, but Mr. Gadivdar, expressing a desire to meet the child and become his custodian, moved court. On May 4, a Division Bench headed by Justice Revati Mohite-Dere had stayed the order of the child’s legal adoption proceedings. “It is a case of a minor child being given up for adoption when the biological father of the child is willing to take custody of the child. As these adoption formalities have not been completed, we direct that the adoption proceedings are not completed,” the court had said.

On July 17, the woman got married to another person.

When the CWC rejected the Mr. Gadivdar’s application for custody of his child, the court gave the committee an ultimatum saying that it would pass an order unless the committee granted the child’s custody to the father.