Kerala Man Loses Custody Of Daughter Over Failure To Provide Her Home-Cooked Food
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The Supreme Court intervened after the mother challenged Kerala High Court’s 15-day custody ruling, raising concerns about the child’s condition at the father’s home.
The SC bench said that while the father may be loving and well-meaning, the environment he offered was unsuitable for his child.
In a dramatic reversal of the Kerala High Court’s decision, the Supreme Court awarded sole custody of an 8-year-old girl to her mother, citing the father’s inability to provide home-cooked meals and a supportive environment during his interim custody periods. The apex court took strong exception to the father’s care arrangements, which included feeding the child restaurant food daily and isolating her from her younger sibling.
The girl’s estranged parents were earlier directed by the Kerala High Court to share custody on an alternating 15-day basis each month. However, the Supreme Court intervened after the mother challenged this ruling, raising concerns about the conditions at the father’s home.
A bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol, and Sandeep Mehta engaged directly with the child and found several issues with the existing custody arrangement. Notably, during her stay with the father – who works in Singapore and rents a temporary residence in Thiruvananthapuram – the girl did not receive a single home-cooked meal, surviving entirely on restaurant food. She was also isolated, with no companionship except for her father, and separated from her 3-year-old brother who resides with their mother.
“The child requires nutritious home-cooked food for her overall well-being, growth and development. Unfortunately, the father is not in a position to provide such nutrition to the child,” Justice Mehta wrote in the judgment, as reported by The Times of India. He added that “continued consumption of food procured from restaurants/hotels would pose a health hazard, even to a grown-up person, what to talk of a tender aged child of eight years.”
The bench concluded that, while the father may be loving and well-meaning, the environment he offered was unsuitable. “The fact that the child gets no company whatsoever except for that of the father during the interim custody period of 15 days is an additional factor which weighs heavily against his claim,” the judgment noted.
The court emphasised that the child would benefit emotionally, morally, and socially from living with her mother, who works from home and is supported by her own parents. “The emotional and moral support which the child gets at her mother’s home is manifold than what is being provided by the father during the interim custody period,” the order stated, adding, “The period of 15 days during which the daughter would be with the father would also lead to deprivation of her company to her sibling, the boy child aged three years.”
The Supreme Court also sharply criticised the Kerala High Court’s decision to grant 15-day monthly custody of the three-year-old son to the father, calling the move “grossly unjustified”. The bench warned that such separation could “have serious adverse effect on the emotional and physical well-being of the son being forced to be separated from the mother at a tender age.”
Going forward, the father has been granted limited interim custody of the daughter on the first and third Saturdays and Sundays of each month. He may also connect with her via video calls twice a week. In-person meetings will be limited to four hours on either of the two video-call days, but only if the girl is comfortable and under the supervision of a child counsellor.
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