Custody of minor child be handed over to father not the mother as the latter eloped with another man without proper divorce,directed Allahabad High Court

The Allahabad High Court has directed that custody of a minor child be handed over to the father, citing the mother’s alleged actions of eloping with another man without seeking a formal divorce from her husband.

A bench of Justice Saurabh Srivastava observed that the future of the minor child, a budding citizen of a glorious country, cannot be permitted to be taken care of by ‘such a mother’ who fled away with a person without divorcing her husband.

” Considering the arguments raised by

the counsel for parties and the statement rendered by the petitioner, the only point of consideration available before this court is to secure the future of the petitioner’s son, who is a minor child and budding citizen of this glorious country, the future of the country cannot be permitted to taking care of by such a mother, who fled away with a person without having proper recourse of law in the shape of seeking divorce from her husband” the court added.

With this, the court partly allowed the habeas corpus plea moved by the father – Suraj Kumar seeking custody of his son. It was his case that his wife and his son were in the illegal custody of another person.

However, before the court, the wife claimed that she and her child reside with another man of her own will. She, however, admitted that the petitioner in this case (Suraj Kumar) is the father of the child in question.

The counsel for the husband/father argued that his client has adequate financial means to take care of the upbringing of his child, and the future of corpus cannot be put into the lurch only on the grounds of fantasy and fancy culture adopted by the wife/mother.

Considering the arguments raised by counsel for parties and the statement rendered by the petitioner, the court stressed that the minor child cannot be left with the woman who fled away with a person without having proper recourse of law in the shape of seeking a divorce from her husband.

Given this, the court directed the sub-inspector, who produced the corpus before the court to hand over the custody of the minor child to his father forthwith.

Accordingly, the court in its decision dated January 22 partly allowed the petition.