To what extent can one go to claim the custody of one’s child after divorce? In this case from Kerala, a mother allegedly went to the extent of forging a judgment of an Australian court and submitted it before the Kerala High Court, claiming she had been granted her 10-year-old daughter’s custody. First, the Ministry of External Affairs had to step in. And now, the CBI has been roped in for a probe.
The story goes like this. Nomy Joppen married Jeeva Santhosh in Ernakulam in 2011, and they have a 10-year-old daughter Bethsheba. Their marriage was dissolved in 2018 and the mother (Santhosh) was not granted the child’s custody by the family court in Ernakulam.
Santhosh, who has moved to Australia, surprised everyone by filing a document in 2022 through a writ petition before the Kerala High Court, which was purportedly a judgment of the Federal Circuit and Family Court in Australia. The mother claimed this Australian judgment had granted her permanent custody of her daughter and in fact the father had filed the case in Australia in 2017 and the court had listened to both the parties too.
Nomy was left shocked, as he had never filed such a case, far from ever appearing before the Australian court. He told the Kerala High Court that this appeared to be a forged document. The court then got the Union of India involved to ascertain if the Australian court judgment, that was dated January 26, 2018, was indeed genuine or forged. The Ministry of External Affairs hence got into the picture, and wrote to the Australian government. The Consulate General of India in Melbourne, after inquiries, sent an e-mail to the High Court saying the said document was forged.
It was further found that the said court by name of ‘Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia’ had only commenced operating in 2021 but a judgment of the same was cited from 2018. Prior to 2021, the name of the court was only ‘Family Court of Australia’ while in 2021 two courts had merged to come up with a single name. The High Court, hence, went on to fine the mother Rs 50,000 for the forgery.
The father, Nomy, however, decided not to end matters there. He demanded that an FIR be registered against Santhosh under various sections of IPC for fraud and forgery “of a valuable security”, which he termed as his child.
Meanwhile, the mother who had assured the court that she will not leave India without HC’s permission, left for Australia. Nomy says she has absconded.
Nomy has asked the Kerala High Court to order an FIR and also wants Santosh’s passport to be impounded so that she be brought back to India. The CBI has now stepped in and lodged an FIR against Jeeva Santhosh who lives in Victoria, Australia. The bitter custody battle of a 10-year-old child is set to get worse.
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