Mother’s love is more valuable: Maharashtra court gives woman kid's custody

Abstract

Observing that a mother's role in the development of a child's personality can never be doubted, a sessions court, while adjudicating in a custody case between a Pune-based father and a city-based woman, said, "A child gets the best protection through the mother. It is a most natural thing for any child to grow up in the company of one's mother. The company of the mother is the most natural thing for a child."
The court further pointed out that the children's grandmother was taking care of them and even she cannot be a substitute for a "natural mother".
"The grandmother is old and having her own problems. So considering the totality of facts and circumstances, the welfare of the children lies with the mother," the court said.

The 37-year-old man moved the sessions court last week after a magistrate's court ordered him to pay his wife Rs 20,000 every month and hand over the custody of the children. The woman had filed a domestic violence complaint against her husband and in-laws before the magistrate's court last year. The now estranged couple got married in 2012. The woman said her attempts to meet her children were thwarted.

While the husband claimed that his wife was suffering from mental ailments, a court-appointed panel comprising a psychologist and three psychiatrists found that she was not suffering from schizophrenia.[Read More]