This story is from July 24, 2018

Indian mom in epic battle to regain child’s custody from Italian father

Indian mom in epic battle to regain child’s custody from Italian father
Bombay HC
MUMBAI: The Bombay high court has continued a red corner notice against an Italian national and a yellow corner notice against his adopted Indian child who he took away in breach of an undertaking to the court. He is in a custody battle with his estranged wife, an Indian national, started over five years ago.
The HC observed that he took away the girl child to Italy in 2015 and obtained orders of sole custody from a juvenile justice court in Venice by suppressing facts.

red

The mother has been battling a 2013 dismissal by a Pune family court of her plea for custody of the adopted child. The court, without hearing her, had granted custody to the father (as sought by him in 2011). The HC, in October 2015, set aside the family court order and directed the father to hand over the child to the mother. Because of noncompliance, the HC directed the CBI (Interpol) to issue the red and yellow corner notices. The mother has since been trying to trace them, at least to engage in video chat with the girl to be able to build a bond till she gets her back to India.
The transnational battle involves principles of private international law. The HC passed several orders directing the ministry of external affairs (MEA) to step in and reach out to its Italian counterpart to help trace the father and the child, and bring her back. The efforts of the MEA and authorities in Rome led to the father being traced earlier this year. Relying on the Venetian court order, he refused to surrender the child, saying she was being well looked after.

Earlier this month, a bench of HC Justices K K Tated and B P Colabawalla said it found that MEA did “everything possible to try and ensure that the wife would get at least Skype or video conferencing access to the child. However, it appears that there has been no response from the Italian authorities”. The bench, after hearing lawyers Rohaan Cama for the mother and Rui Rodrigues and Dushyant Kumar for the Centre said, “We find that there are no further directions that we could pass to force the Union of India in ensuring that the order of this court… can be complied with.”
The HC gave the mother the liberty to “take whatever recourse she has in law, including going to Italy and taking whatever steps she requires for having the order passed by the Venice court vacated”. The HC asked the MEA to assist the mother, at her own cost.
In its last affidavit on April 23, the MEA set out steps taken by it to locate and connect the adopted child with the estranged mother, even if it was to enable a face time call.
MEA made several requests for over a year to the foreign affairs ministry and sought cooperation of the Italian government through the Indian embassy in Rome.
The HC recorded that prima facie it appeared that the father “has played fraud on this court by posing that he was submitting to its orders, though he made a systematic plot to take the child out of this country”.
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About the Author
Swati Deshpande

Swati Deshpande is Senior editor at The Times of India, Mumbai, where she has been covering courts for over a decade. She is passionate about law and works towards enlightening people about their statutory, legal and fundamental rights. She makes it her job to decipher for the public the truth, be it in an intricate civil dispute or in a gruesome criminal case.

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