India: Court rules a divorced mother’s custody of child can never be illegal

Story here. Excerpt:

'New Delhi - A divorce cannot take away a mother’s right to be with her child and the custody cannot be called unlawful, a city court has held while quashing a man’s petition alleging that his estranged wife had illegally detained his son.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Rakesh K Sharma said that keeping the child is a mother’s “natural right”, and a court requires extraordinary reasons to disturb the guardianship. “The custody of a minor child by his mother, by any stretch of imagination, would not constitute any offence,” the ACMM said in his order on Thursday.

The court also held that a mother could not be called an offender even if she forcibly detains the child. In the present case, the man had demanded that a search warrant be issued against his estranged wife.'