The Bombay High Court recently upheld a lower court order granting guardianship of a minor girl to her maternal grandmother, and said the right to preserve childhood is a fundamental right.
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A single-judge bench of Justice Mridula Bhatkar was hearing pleas filed by the paternal and maternal grandmothers to be appointed as the guardian of the minor girl.
On May 5, 2014, a district judge in Raigad passed an order granting guardianship of the girl to the maternal grandmother under the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890.
The girl’s father killed her mother in Dubai in 2013, and the child was sent to India with her paternal grandparents. The maternal grandmother took the child away, leading to the tussle. The paternal grandmother had accused the girl’s uncle of sexually assaulting her.
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After Justice Bhatkar quizzed the girl on this, she said, “I am of the view that the minor child is unable to give intelligent preference and is tutored and tends to imagine the sexual acts … There is an attempt to create malice in the mind of the child against the family of her deceased mother.”
Not a pawn
The bench said that lodging an apparently false case of rape was a serious matter, and that a child should not be used as a pawn to settle scores.
The court upheld the lower court order and said, “The right to live with dignity, the right to preserve childhood and the human rights of the child are contemplated within the fundamental Right to Life under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.”