A father of a four-month old girl - suffering from a serious disease and abandoned by her mother - is now running from pillar to post to make his estranged wife breastfeed her.
The baby is suffering from Erb's Palsy, the paralysis of the arm caused by injury to its main nerves during a difficult delivery. According to the doctor, the medicines have to be administered to the baby only through the mother's milk and not orally.
The baby was allegedly abandoned by her mother when she was two months old, and now, an ugly court fight has started between the couple.
The husband, who earlier claimed to be unaware of his estranged wife's whereabouts, had moved the Delhi High Court with a habeas corpus petition to trace his missing spouse.
When the woman appeared in the high court, she refused to take the child's custody for three months to administer her medicines.
She told the high court that she was allergic to the medicines which needed to be given to the child and she cannot consume them.
The high court recorded her statement and disposed of the matter, bringing the situation to square one.
Upset over the outcome in the high court, the husband, a lawyer by profession, has now knocked the doors of the trial court for penal action against his wife for abandoning the child.
Metropolitan Magistrate Abhilash Malhotra directed the Delhi Police to file an Action Taken Report in the matter.
A person, aware of the case and seeking anonymity, highlighted that an important question arises whether a child has a right to seek love and care from biological parents.
He said though the law recognised restitution of conjugal rights of a spouse against another, there is a vacuum in the law regulating the rights of a child who has been abandoned by a biological parent to seek restitution of their company.
In the absence of any such remedy under the law, the court would have to deal with this peculiar situation whether it could direct the mother to take care of her infant, who is in dire need of medicines or ask her to keep the child with her.
Though the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act 2015 provides punishment for abandoning a child, it is silent regarding the remedy of restitution of the minor with parents.
The baby, born to a Delhi family on December 9, 2017, suffers from Erb's Palsy that caused a partial paralysis in her left arm and the doctors have advised certain precautions, medicines and exercises, the complaint said.
