'Sheer High Handedness': Bombay High Court Expresses Displeasure Over CWC's Conduct In Handling Father's Case For Child's Custody

The Bombay High Court on Friday expressed the need to train officials of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), displeased over the manner in which the committee declared a child free for adoption despite the biological father’s pleas for the child’s custody.

The court said it would order records of the present case to be placed before the appropriate department for consideration. “Whether some training should be conducted. It's definitely needed,” the division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Gauri Godse observed.

In cases of adoption the role of the Child Welfare Committee is to determine the best interest of the child and find the child a safe home and environment either with his/her biological parents or adoptive parents or in an institution.

The bench was ceased with a habeas corpus petition filed by a 21-year-old who had eloped with a 17-year-old- minor, married her and had a child with her in November 2021.

The man was imprisoned under the POCSO Act on charges of rape for establishing sexual relations with a minor. In the meantime, the child and mother were kept with an NGO and in December 2022 the CWC declared the child free for adoption after the woman cited financial difficulties in bringing up the child.

The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) gave the child for adoption on January 3 this year after which the man approached High Court. However, after the HC’s intervention, on June 16, CWC withdrew its December order.

The petitioner’s lawyer Ashish Dubey submitted that CWC's order declaring the child free for adoption was wrong as the child was neither abandoned nor orphaned. Moreover, the man was seeking the child's custody as the mother had now married someone else.

The High Court questioned CWC and asked them if the biological father had no right to the abandoned child after which the prosecutor assured the court that the father’s request for the child’s custody would be considered.

On Friday, the CWC informed the High Court that it had handed over the child’s custody to the biological father.

However, the High Court took strong exception to the CWC’s fresh order wherein it mentioned that they were acting on the oral directions of the High Court, without acknowledging they were correcting their own folly.

“Why are your officers behaving in the manner in which they are? We don't approve of this order. First of all, whatever you have said is incorrect. You don't want to say you made a mistake and revoke the earlier order. What sort of an order is this passing the buck on the court?”

The court added that it would pass strictures. “This is sheer highhandedness of the officer. We will record the conduct of the CWC officers. The department should know how the CWC is conducting itself and taking things so lightly.”

“We are really worried about the functioning of the CWC.”

The APP Prajakta Shinde accepted that the CWC needed to correct its order and said a revised order would be placed before the bench on Tuesday.

“APP on instructions states the child's custody has been handed over to the petitioner yesterday. She says although an order has been passed, the CWC would want to put it in a proper manner and place it before the court.” the bench noted and placed the matter on Tuesday.