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NTR's son loses interim custody
of his grandchildren

The Supreme Court has directed Nandamuri Jayakrishna, son of former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and matinee idol N T Rama Rao, to handover the interim custody of his daughter's two sons to his son-in-law.

Reversing a Madras high court order, a bench of Justice D P Mohapatra and Justice Shivaraj V Patil asked Jayakrishna to handover the custody of two minor sons of his daughter Kumudini, who committed suicide last year, to his son-in-law R V Srinath Prasad, a businessman based in the US.

Kumudini lived with her husband Srinath in the US between 1993 and 1999. She came back to India with her children and began living with her in-laws at Chennai in 2000.

On October 24, 2000 she consumed poison and died five days later. Shortly before the incident, she had moved from her father-in-law's house to a new house purchased by her father in Madras.

Jayakrishna filed a petition on November 7, 2000, in the family courts at Madras seeking custody of the minor children.

On the same day he filed a writ petition in the Madras high court seeking a direction to the family courts to dispose of the petition expeditiously.

In his interim application, Jayakrishna had sought interim custody of his grandchildren to take them to Hyderabad to perform the "karma" of their deceased mother.

Justice Mohapatra said custody of minor children was a sensitive issue involving sentimental attachment and had to be approached and tackled carefully.

He said from the material on record "we are not satisfied that there was any urgency in disposing of the case" with such haste without affording reasonable opportunity to the son-in-law to place material on record.

"The procedure followed by the high court was neither fair nor proper," the bench said.

The high court appeared to have lost sight of the factual position that at the time of death of their mother, the children were left in the custody of their paternal grandparents with whom their father was staying, it said.

"The high court appears to have overlooked the settled principle that custody orders by their nature can never be final; however, before a change is made it must be proved to be in the paramount interest of the children," Justice Mohapatra said.

PTI

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