In Brief
A father removed his five-year-old son from the United States to India in 2015 in violation of a US court custody order favouring the mother. The mother obtained a writ of habeas corpus from the Delhi High Court directing the child's return. The Supreme Court reversed this, holding that the welfare of the child—not comity of courts or the foreign order—must be paramount. Since the child had spent half his life in India, adapted to his environment with grandparents and schooling, and there was no evidence of harm from remaining in India, repatriation was not in his interest. The Court allowed the appeal and left custody to be decided by competent Indian courts in pending proceedings.
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