New Delhi, Feb 11 (IANS) A Delhi High Court decision to allow a mother to take her six-year-old daughter to the US along with her second husband, has left the father and his family in utter shock, who now plan to appeal in the Supreme Court.
Justice Rekha Palli said in a judgment last week that the child is stated to be extremely attached to her mother and it will be in her welfare to continue to stay with the mother.
“Both myself and my family members are aghast at this inhuman order. We have been fighting for the well-being of my daughter for the last so many years and through this order my years of hard work has been rendered useless,” the father told IANS.
The child’s father, who is a Delhi-based medical practitioner, had moved a plea seeking custody of the child on the ground that her relocation to the US would not be in her welfare and she should be allowed to live in her own country.
“I pray that no child or parent in the world has to go through such an ordeal. No developed country allows permanent international relocation for such reasons,” the father stated.
He further said that in countries like the US, where his former wife is relocating, parents have to live within a 10 miles radius after separation or divorce, so that the child can get the love of both the parents.
Justice Palli had said: “any separation of the child from her mother at this stage is likely to cause undue anxiety to her which certainly needs to be avoided”.
The high court said the child, when she moved to the US, will be able to regularly interact with her father via video calls, even on a daily basis.
“Everyone knows that a girl child is always more attached to the father. Through this order, basic rights of my daughter as well as myself have been snatched. I fail to understand how someone can substitute physical interaction with their children by video calls,” the father said.
He added that he has also placed a video on record to show how much the child is attached to him, but “like all other evidence, this has also not been considered”.
Claiming that the instances of child neglect by his former wife have also not been considered by the court, the father said that he would now be appealing the Delhi High Court verdict in the apex court.
The couple, who had got married in 2013, divorced with mutual consent in 2018, agreeing that while the mother would be having the child’s custody, the father would have visitation rights.
The child was born in 2017. The father remarried in 2020, while the mother married again in 2021.
