Taking note of the medical exigencies of a four-month-old girl, suffering from a serious disease and abandoned by her mother, a Delhi court today directed the woman to appear before it.
Metropolitan Magistrate Abhilash Malhotra said that considering the health condition of the infant, who is battling with Erb's Palsy, it was required that her mother be called to the court on May 5 to know her stand.
While the child's father has been running from pillar to post to make his estranged wife breast-feed her medicines, the woman has refused to join his company or to consume medicines on the ground that she is allergic to such drugs. Erb's palsy is paralysis of the arm caused by injury to its main nerves during a difficult delivery.
In pursuance to court's order, the Delhi Police also filed a status report saying the mother has not been confined or kept in any unlawful custody and she has been willingly staying at her parental house.
The police said the woman was examined and she had alleged that she was being threatened by her husband and in-laws, who had thrown her out of the matrimonial house on February 9. She had also claimed that she will be eliminated if she filed any complaint regarding their purported dowry demand.
The police sought time to complete its enquiry in the matter saying the child's father has given them a written statement mentioning more details of the infant's medical condition and cruelty done to her.
The matter reached the court when the husband, a lawyer by profession, filed a complaint for penal action against his wife for abandoning the child.
While the girl, who was allegedly abandoned by her mother when she was two months old, is battling with the disease, her father's efforts to get back the mother has not yielded any result and an ugly court fight has started between the couple.
Unaware of his estranged wife's whereabouts, the husband had intially approached the Delhi High Court with a habeas corpus petition to trace his missing spouse.
When the woman had earlier appeared in the high court, she refused to join him or take the child's custody for three months to administer her medicines. She told the high court that she was allergic to the medicines which needed to be given to the child through breast feed and she cannot consume them.
The high court recorded her statement and disposed of the matter, bringing the situation to square one.
A person, aware of the case but sought anonymity, gave a very peculiar narrative to the entire story saying that an important question arises whether a child has a right to seek love and care from biological parents.
He has said though the law recognised restitution of conjugal rights of a spouse against another, there is a vacuum in the law regulating the rights of a child who has been abandoned by a biological parent to seek restitution of their company.
In the absence of any such remedy under the law, the trial court would have to deal with this peculiar situation whether it could direct the mother to take care of her infant, who is in dire need of medicines to be given through her or ask her to keep the child with her.
Though the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act 2015, provides punishment for abandoning a child, it is silent regarding the remedy of restitution of the minor with parents.
The girl child, born to a Delhi family on December 9, 2017, suffered from Erb's Palsy in which there was a partial paralysis in her left arm and the doctors have advised certain precautions, medicines and exercises, the complaint said.
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