High Court hands over custody of dyslexic boy to father

A Division Bench comprising Justices S. Manikumar and M. Venugopal while dismissing an appeal preferred by the mother of a 14-year-old dyslexic boy challenging a divorce decree awarded by a Family court, said “normally when the child is of tender age, it is the mother who can take care and provide motherly affection, but this cannot be pressed into service as a universal application.” 

The duty of the court should always be to find the course of action which would be beneficial for the child and that should be the primary consideration while giving custody either to the mother or father. 

But, in this case since they had confirmed the divorce decree granted on the ground of cruelty and desertion, they handed over the child custody to his father, the Judges said. Justice Venugopal said that the husband’s allegations of his wife having picked frequent quarrels with him for refusing to migrate to the USA, assaulting him in the course of those quarrels, abusing his parents and engaging goons to threaten them have to be believed, since she had neither examined herself nor cross examined her husband and his parents.

In the absence of cross examination of her in-laws and husband, an adverse inference would be drawn in the eye of law that their evidence had remained blameless and they were worthy of acceptance, the court observed.

Hence, this court comes to an irresistible and irrevocable conclusion that the husband has established the ground of cruelty and desertion by his wife and granted divorce as sought by him, the Judges said.