The Supreme Court will soon lay down guidelines on deciding child custody cases between non resident Indian parents. V. Kumara Swamy explains how the legal lacuna is affecting the lives of parents and children alike

Seven-year-old Adit-ya Chandran and his mother are hiding somewhere in India. If the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as per a recent Supreme Court order, manages to trace Aditya, he will be handed over to his US-based father.

“My son has not gone to school for the last two-and-a-half years. He has been forced to live like a fugitive by his mother in violation of court orders both in the US and India,” says Dr V. Ravi Chandran, a scientist.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that a US-born child and his Indian mother be sent back to New York, from where she had brought the child following a legal row over his custody with her divorced husband.

Ordering the deportation of both the mother and the child to the US within a fortnight, a bench of Justice Tarun Chatterjee and Justice GS Singhvi said the New York family court will take a call on the child's custody.

The bench also asked the child's father to foot the bill for travel of the mother-child duo to New York.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested the child's mother, Vijayashree Voora, from Chennai Oct 25 following an apex court order Aug 25. The bench had ordered the CBI to intervene after the police of various states failed to trace the minor child, as his mother was consistently on the move from one state to another to dodge the police, for the past two years.

Police statistics show that child abuse has a new face: drunken mothers. Police say they get around 400 reports of domestic violence against children each year; these days around two-thirds of the cases point to intoxicated mothers.

The recession has apparently had a lot to do with the spike in the number of inebriated women who turn abusive.

"The typical case is a single mother who has an alcohol problem and who's become exhausted by work," explains Police Sergeant Pekka Hätönen, who's in charge of the child abuse unit at the Helsinki Itäkeskus police department.

A child custody battle naturally goes in favour of the mother. But is this always fair to the father?

Two fathers fighting for child custody rights got the thumbs up from the Supreme Court last week. On Friday, a mother had to withdraw a petition trying to thwart a father’s legal quest for more time with his daughter. The apex court had weighed in on his side, directing the divorced couple to settle it out of court.

On the same day, in another case, where a father has been estranged from his son for two years, the Supreme Court directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to step in. The CBI has been given six weeks to find the mother who has gone absconding with her son. The apex court felt compelled to take this step since its repeated directions to state police departments on the matter had come to naught.

Bangalore: “When I was small, I thought you were simply great. And when I grew up, I knew I was always right as a puppy!” says a dalmation looking up at its dad. This was on a card a teenager finally bought for Father’s Day. He is one of the many sons who belong to the new creed that does not say ‘I don’t need a special day to honour my dad’.

The Western trend has surely caught up with Namma Bengaluru. While sending flowers and cakes home is the trend among outstation sons and daughters, the ones at home prefer to go out for a dinner and surprise their father with gifts. Online booking centres and gift shops in the city have witnessed heightened activity the past couple of days.

“We get orders from abroad and other Indian states. Usually the price range of gifts we sell is from Rs 500 to Rs 800,” said Ravi Tiwari of Orchidsnroses. They have special Fathers’ Day kits, comprising laptops as well as gulab jamuns. Customized packages are also available.