Fathers separated from kids ready to fight back
Fathers separated from kids ready to fight back
Payal Gwalani, TNN | Jun 15, 2014, 02.15PM IST
NAGPUR: As children around the world express love and gratitude for their fathers this Sunday, a group of aggrieved men will take an initiative that may take them closer to their children. These men will be submitting a memorandum to the government to make laws regarding divorce and children’s custody gender neutral. Members of various men’s rights organizations would be also organizing protests all across the country in this regard.
With increase in divorce cases, especially in urban India, the number of cases for custody of children pending in family courts is only increasing. Under the aegis of NGO Child Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting (CRISP), several organizations working for enactment of gender neutral laws will be observing a ‘Protest Day’ instead of ‘Father’s Day’ on Sunday.
Regional chapters of the NGOS in cities like Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Nagpur, Lucknow, and Mysore among others will be addressing grievances of such fathers through free legal counselling and promoting the campaign for shared parenting. In the city, members of the NGO Save Indian Family Foundation would be organizing a protest at Lendra Park, Ramdaspeth.
“We, as fathers who are denied access to their own children during any legal battle between parents, have already dispatched a memorandum explaining our side of the story to the ministries concerned and even to the Prime Minister’s Office,” said Bangalore-based Kumar Jahgirdar, founder president of CRISP. He also said NGOs have been working in this direction for long but the earlier government was not responsive at all. “With the change in government, we are optimistic about desired changes happening soon,” he added.
Central India coordinator of SIFF Rajesh Vakharia informed that when similar letters and memorandums were sent to the local judicial authorities, their response was not very encouraging. “We sent the letters to the family court, principal judge of Nagpur and the guardian judge of Maharashtra. We only wished for permission to hold a legal counselling and a peaceful protest on the premises of the family court. This would have enabled us to reach out to those fathers who really need us. However, they either didn’t respond or conveniently said they could not help much,” he said. Vakharia added that current laws are slowly creating a society where fathers would be non-existent.
WHAT MEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVISTS SAY
*Separated/divorced fathers are relegated to the status of an ATM machine, and the child has become a bargaining tool for wives to extort money and property *Thousands of separated men are not allowed to see their own children, let alone spend quality time with them *Many husbands face threats of false cases like dowry harassment, domestic violence, kidnapping, child molestation etc if they make attempts to meet their children against the wish of their wives *When a couple goes through separation, the child is used for playing emotional games on the father *Many women poison the child against the father out of vengeance which will hamper the father-child bonding, which is essential for a child’s normal growth *Family courts are generally biased