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Have a Heart Foundation (Sales & Mktng)     06 May 2015

Important Article : Speed up contempt cases in child access violations

 
 

MUMBAI: A 39-year-old father of a seven-year-old has been coming to Mumbai from Kerala for almost four years twice every month to see his child during access visits at the family court premises. 

But for six months now, he has not been getting regular overnight access despite court orders passed last October, he said. 

The father, George Vengal, is not alone. At the Bandra family court, non-custodial parents—estranged parents whose minor child or children are with the other parent—have often complained of access orders being breached. But on Tuesday, he made these submissions before a bench headed by Chief Justice Mohit Shah as he mentioned a matter, which he said concerned not just his case, but "children across Mumbai". Vengal was mentioning, along with a clutch of other non-custodial parents their plight when access orders are flouted with impunity and contempt cases get no early hearing in court. Non-custodial parents, often found to be fathers, lamented a general lack of deterrence to prevent such violation of access orders. Chief Justice Shah lent a sympathetic ear and directed him to submit his petition to the HC registrar for subsequent action. It would then be dealt with by the HC on the administrative side. 

The HC was told that since 2010 not a single order had been passed in contempt petitions and that a letter had also been sent to the Chief Justice regarding the issue, which has caused much concern among parents whose fight to spend precious few hours with their children in their most impressionable years gets tougher each time access is denied. Vengal's plea was that all contempt petitions be directed to be disposed of in three months. 

He added, some custodial parents, during pending divorce or custody battles, disobey access orders passed by the family court or even those passed by Bombay high court. Unless orders are passed for flouting of access orders, litigants will not be discouraged from doing so, he said. The plea was to "provide necessary directions in the form of an administrative order to dispose of all pending contempt petitions filed till December 31, 2014, within a period of three months from today". 

Lawyers said that when orders of access are flouted, parents plead helplessness and point to child's lack of interest in meeting the absent parent. 

But in January this year, the HC had in an order after interviewing a child, said "Upon perusal of the marriage counsellor's report and other reports and after interviewing the child, this court is of prima facie opinion that the child has been thoroughly tutored to refuse to meet the respondent." The court was hearing a challenge against overnight access granted by the family court to a father. The court said that, "In the eventuality that the child is given access during the course of the day, she would get acquainted with the father," but stayed the weekly overnight access order and allowed the child and father to have telephonic conversation.



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