Arathy Ramachandran v. Bijay Raj Menon
Background
The appellant-mother and respondent-father, both professionals, married in 2014 and had a daughter (born 2016) and a son (born 2022); the marriage broke down and the mother sought permanent custody of both children in the Family Court, Thiruvananthapuram. While that case was pending, the Kerala High Court granted the father interim custody of both children for 15 days every month, even though he lives and works in Singapore. The mother appealed to the Supreme Court, raising concerns that during his 15-day custody periods the father was not providing home-cooked food (relying instead on restaurant deliveries), had not engaged a nanny as directed, and left the children largely without companionship.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court personally interacted "in camera" with the eight-year-old daughter, who confirmed she was fed only restaurant food during her father's custody periods and had no company besides him. The Court held that the High Court's 15-day alternating custody arrangement was not conducive to the children's physical and emotional well-being, particularly for the three-year-old son, who had barely lived with his Singapore-based father, and set aside that part of the order entirely, restoring the son's custody to the mother. For the daughter, the Court replaced the 15-day arrangement with a more limited schedule: the father would get custody on alternate Saturdays and Sundays, with only supervised four-hour access to the son on those days (supervised by a court-approved child counsellor), plus video calls twice a week, while directing the Family Court to expedite the pending permanent custody case.
Lesson Learnt
In child custody matters, the child's actual welfare, not a parent's sincerity or desire for equal time, is the paramount and deciding consideration, and courts will personally verify a child's living conditions (even interviewing the child directly) rather than relying solely on the parties' competing claims.