HC 'listens' to child refusing to see mom

HYDERABAD: Rendered helpless by a 9-year-old girl child's plea to stay with her father, two judges of the Andhra Pradesh High Court on Wednesday changed an earlier order passed by a Lok Adalat court. The division bench comprising Justice L Narasimha Reddy and Justice Ramesh Ranganathan, while dealing with a case being fought between a warring couple, heard them here on Wednesday at an in-camera proceeding, ascertained the views of their child and passed an order taking away the visitation rights of the mother after the child in question told the court that she did not wish to see her mother ever in her life. The couple, a Hyderabadi husband and a Maharashtrian wife, was trying for a legal separation through the Lok Adalat headed by a senior civil judge court in Ranga Reddy district. The court had granted the custody of the child to the father and gave visitation rights to the mother. According to this order, mother could visit the child during this summer and also during December this year. Meanwhile, the father filed a writ petition seeking to cancel the visitation rights of his erstwhile wife. Following this, the division bench on Wednesday heard the couple and the child in-camera and ascertained their views in person. They were surprised and pained to listen to the views of the child who stubbornly rejected to be with her mother and also expressed her displeasure to see her mother even as part of her visitation rights. The judges said in their order: "In these circumstances we cannot enforce the visitation rights granted to the mother. Hence, we cancel the visitation accorded to the mother for this summer." The matter would be heard again after the summer vacation
29 May 2008, 0441 hrs IST,TNN
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