NRIs want law on child custody and Hague pact
In the wake of various legal hurdles coming in the way of deciding cases of child custody on the break-up of the marriages of Indian girls with NRIs or vice-versa, 30 million people of Indian origin living abroad are awaiting for a promised legislation by the government to deal with the problem.
The NRIs also wonder why the Indian government is developing “cold feet” on signing the “Hague Convention” of 1980 on the “civil aspects of child abduction” while it has been signed by 76 nations.
These are the burning issues to be raised again by some Indian jurists in the international conference in London this week on the problem of “international child abduction and their relocation” to rightful custodian after the failure of the marriages of Indian girls with the NRI boys or vice-versa.
A research paper based on recent cases of child custody in the inter-country marital disputes coming before the courts and many times judiciary, even the Supreme Court, finding it difficult to intervene due to reasons of jurisdiction, would be the focus of NRIs’ problem in the conference to build pressure on the Indian government.
“Broken cross-border marriages, multi-jurisdictional litigations and enforcement of child custody orders of foreign courts has created the new jurisprudence, raising the issues of inter-parental child removal. The problem is compounded as no Indian legislation defines or deals directly with inter-parental child removal,” the paper says.
The research paper prepared by Chandigarh-based lawyer Anil Malhotra on behalf of the Indian jurists, says “till the government comes up with the legislation, the solution to the problem can only be found in the Hague Convention”.
The Hague Convention provides for recognition of the orders of courts of signatory countries in the child custody cases. “The guidelines of the Convention are a wealth of information on the issue,” the document says.
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