In this case, the mother of the minor had committed suicide on March 7, 2018, and thereafter the father of the minor had been arrested in connection with the criminal case registered over the suicide. Subsequently, the father had moved an application seeking custody of the minor who at that point of time had been in the custody of her maternal grandmother, Kajal Saha.

During the pendency of the appeal, the maternal grandmother also committed suicide. Under such circumstances, the minor was put in the care and custody of Julie Roy, a neighbor and a distant relation of the mother of the child.

The Calcutta High Court has recently overruled its prior decision in a case by granting the custody of a four and a half years old girl child to her biological father instead of a family friend of her deceased mother. The Court issued the direction by relying upon the report of a clinical psychologist who had personally interacted with the child.

The Court had earlier refused to grant custody of the minor girl to her biological father and had instead permitted the child to be in the care and protection of the family friend of her deceased mother. The biological father had however been granted visitation rights.

Overruling the Court’s prior direction, a Bench comprising Justice Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee and Justice Soumen Sen opined that the family friend, Julie Roy, is incapable of taking care of the minor child in question.
It remarked,
“We were of the view that Julie Roy was unfit for the custody of the child. Her conduct does not make her fit to become a guardian of the child. She is neither financially capable of rearing of the child nor can provide the child with education. She has her own family along with grown up son. On the contrary, the biological father is an engineer and is financially sound. He also had an attachment towards his child, and over a period of time as the report would suggest a bonding has developed between the father and the child.”

The court further said, “When the bonding between the father and the child is growing, we do not want to disturb the present position”.