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My article, India’s ‘Bindal’ Committee promotes
international child abduction has been published in the current (9/18) edition
of the International
Family Law Journal.
In the article, I explain that the debate in India
concerning the prevention of international child abduction to India, and India’
s potential accession to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of
International Child Abduction, took a major turn for the worse with the
publication in May 2018 of a report by a committee headed by Justice Rajesh
Bindal and appointed by India’ s Ministry of Women and Child Development.
The Committee rejected the fundamental thesis of the
Hague Convention, which is that abducted children should normally be promptly
returned to their habitual residence, without a determination of the custody
issues concerning the children, unless one of six very narrow exceptions is
established.
Instead, the Committee insisted that abducted children
should not be returned to the country from which a parent has abducted them
unless it is in their best interest to do so and unless any one of several
other broadly-described exceptions is shown to exist.
The Committee’ s report includes a proposed statute
which would establish a quasi-judicial “Inter-Country Parental Child Removal
Disputes Resolution Authority” in India to handle international child abduction
cases.
In my opinion, the proposed legislation would provide
a green light to parents to snatch their children away from their other parents
and from their places of habitual residence outside India, would further cement
India’ s status as a proven safe haven for international child abduction, and
would further encourage international child abduction to India.
In the meantime, the Committee’ s report makes it
clear that left-behind parents should not normally expect that the courts in
India will ever cause an abducted child to be returned, if the abducting parent
claims that it would be unconducive or unbeneficial to do so.
