Divorce happening between couple who will get the custody of the child

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It does therefore appear that when a marriage fails either party, male or female uses the child to browbeat the opposite partner into submission. In the emotional battle of parents the child is often held hostage by whosoever has physical custody. India urgently needs legislative and judicial action to prevent either parent from alienating the child from the estranged partner. An interim measure can always be that a parent who deliberately alienates the child from the other has his or her rights for custody weakened; the underlying assumption always being that it is never healthy for a child to be denied the love and guidance of a biological parent. It is also moot to point out that the absence of these measures inevitably strengthens inter- parental international child abduction since India is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Let us also briefly look at another area of family law jurisprudence- the laws governing prohibition of dowry and domestic violence. It is nobody’s case that these are not social problems in this country. Implementation of the statute has been vitiated to such an extent that the SC held that ‘as has been rightly contended by the petitioner many instances have come to light where the complaints are not bonafide and filed with obligue motive (sic)’ (14). While solicitation of dowry and any violence is indeed reprehensible (and must be met with the full force of the State) is it not shocking that such stringent laws are misused by women and their families? More cogently when will our society mature enough to view goodness or wickedness as part of our innate human nature, not necessarily endowments of our sex? Custody will be decided looking at the benifit of th child.

Advocate Sachetan Ghosh LawRato