Apex court orders deportation of US-born child, Indian mother
By IANSTuesday, November 17, 2009
NEW DELHI - The Supreme Court Tuesday ordered that a US-born child and his Indian mother be sent back to New York, from where she had brought the child following a legal row over his custody with her divorced husband.
Ordering the deportation of both the mother and the child to the US within a fortnight, a bench of Justice Tarun Chatterjee and Justice G.S. Singhvi said the New York family court will take a call on the child’s custody.
The bench also asked the child’s father to foot the bill for travel of the mother-child duo to New York.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested the child’s mother, Vijayashree Voora, from Chennai Oct 25 following an apex court order Aug 25. The bench had ordered the CBI to intervene after the police of various states failed to trace the minor child, as his mother was consistently on the move from one state to another to dodge the police, for the past two years.
The apex court asked the CBI to trace the child and his mother on a plea of the child’s father, New York-based medical practitioner V. Ravi Chandran. He sought the apex court help in September 2007 after Voora brought the child to India violating the New York supreme court’s order, granting him and his divorced wife joint custody of the child.
Ravi Chandran had married Voora in Tirupathi in December 2000. The couple had a son on July 1, 2002, in the US. But shortly thereafter, relations between the couple turned sour and Voora moved New York’s apex court in July 2003 for divorce.
While adjudicating the divorce plea, the New York court on April 18, 2005, granted the couple joint custody of the child, stipulating that both parents would keep the other informed about the whereabouts of the child.
The New York family court eventually also passed the divorce decree in September 2005, incorporating its order that both parents would have alternative physical custody of the minor child on a weekly basis.
