“I would like to stay here and continue my studies” replied a 16-year-old boy — caught in the crossfire of inter-continental marital dispute between his parents — to lawyers’ queries in the Supreme Court.
As a vacation bench of the apex court quizzed him further about the stand of his 11-year-old sister placed in an identical situation, the boy espoused her cause with the same confidence telling the court that she also would like to study in India and both of them were not willing to go to Canada where their father is working with a multinational as an IT professional.
The boy who looked more mature than his age sprang a further surprise and told Justices Deepak Verma and K.S. Radhakrishnan that he and his sister would not even like to stay with their mother, who works with a multinational in Delhi after her separation from her husband, and would rather like to live with their maternal grandparents.
Impressed by the confidence shown by the boy, the apex court took no time in deciding to intervene in the order of a Canadian court in the “complex” inter-continental marital dispute and allowed the children to stay in India and continue with their studies in a public school in Gurgaon.
They got admission in the school even after the closure of academic session last year after their sudden arrival from Canada. Their grandparents, however, live in Chennai. The court was told that the children would like to study in the Gurgaon school for one year and then shift to Chennai. His counsel submitted that their mother was pressurising the children to go to Canada to live with their father.
Their parents’ love marriage — North Indian father and South Indian mother — had gone sour, forcing the wife to come back to India. But the husband had filed a suit for the custody of the children in Canada.
The child had moved the apex court after the mother had started asking the children to go to their father as they failed to get any relief from the Madras high court.
Concerned with the future of the children, their 72-year-old maternal grandfather, a retired Army officer came to their rescue and took upon himself the responsibility to look after them and even moved to Delhi to be their guardian till they complete their academic session in the Gurgaon school, the apex court was informed.
Child’s counsel told the court that the mother was pressurising the children to go to Canada as she feared that the authorities in that country might initiate the process for forfeiting their passports and issuing interpol arrest warrants, a normal practice in the inter-continental marital disputes to secure the custody of a children.