Father fights to keep son with him; ex-wife asks why he gave boy up for adoption.
Karan Mehta, 12, loves to swim and skate; he also plays the tabla. He does well at school and his pet subject is mathematics. He lives with his father, Rakesh, stepmother and grandmother in Ghatkopar.
Five minutes from home are his uncle Dhiren and aunt Geeta. Ketan, however, has become terrified of courts and fears that he will be taken away from his family, especially his father.
The above has been stated in a petition filed by Rakesh Mehta, who has challenged a family court order dated May 7 that Karan’s custody be handed over to ex-wife Meeta, who had ‘deserted’ the child nine years back.
Judge VJ Lohiya had granted Karan’s custody to Meeta on the grounds that Rakesh had given the child for adoption to Geeta and Dhiren, without the mother’s consent, in March 2007. “If he actually has love and affection with (sic) the child then certainly he would not have given the child for adoption,” said judge Lohiya.
The HC has ordered a stay on the custody ruling and the case will come up for hearing before justice DB Bhosale on October 13.
Rakesh, in the petition, claimed that he signed the deed of adoption for Karan’s welfare as the childless couple wanted to bequeath their property to him. “The deed of adoption is a mute formality” and it doesn’t affect Karan’s custody, the petition stated.
The couple divorced by mutual consent in 2006, when it was decided that Rakesh would have Karan’s custody and Meeta would have access to him once a month. Rakesh claimed that she deserted him when he was one-and-a-half years old. Meeta has not accessed the child despite having the right to do so, Rakesh said.
Meeta met Karan “for the first time in many years” only after she filed a petition in the family court in March 2008. Karan, as per the petition, was ‘uncomfortable’ when Meeta tried to impress upon him that she was his mother, Rakesh claimed.
Rakesh stated that it took him long to convince Karan “that nobody would ever take him away from me (Rakesh)”. After this, Meeta met the child five times “against the wishes” of Karan. Karan refused to speak to his mother during sessions with a counsellor, as ordered by the judge during pendency of the family court petition, Rakesh claimed. Rakesh, who remarried in August 2007, claimed that Karan was comfortable with his second wife.
Lohiya dismissed Meeta’s petition claiming that Rakesh committed contempt of court by giving the child for adoption stating that “it was not a willful disobedience of the order”.
Advocate Vivek Kantawala, who appears for Rakesh, refused to comment.
(Names changed on request)
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