Staff Reporter :
The High Court on Sunday stayed for one month a family court order that asked a mother to hand over the custody of her 10-year old daughter to her father. The court at the same time directed that the daughter will remain under the custody of her mother and her father can visit her if he wishes.
The Bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim passed the order after holding hearing on a petition filed by the mother of the daughter to get custody of her child.
The court also directed the lawyer concerned to place the matter for further order after the reopening of the normal court proceedings at the end of the ongoing lockdown period.
Justice Enayetur Rahim expressed astonishment at the family court’s order, wondering how the family court could issue such an order.
Petitioner’s lawyer AKM Fakhrul Islam said the child’s parents got married in 2007. They got separated in 2018 and their divorce resolution came into effect on May 12, 2019.
The child’s mother is now an Assistant Vice-President of Trust Bank and the father is a businessman. The child lives with her mother in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi area and her father lives in Gazipur, the lawyer said.
The child’s father filed a case with a family court in Dhaka in June this year, seeking custody of her child. On June 30, the family court ordered that the child will remain under the custody of her father for 21 days every month and will stay with her mother only on Fridays and Saturdays.
Citing an Appellate Division verdict, Lawyer Fakrul Islam said a girl child of divorced parents is supposed to remain under the custody of the mother until she becomes an adult.
