M A I N   N E W S

Produce ‘real’ Simran, orders SC
Amritsar’s baby custody case
S S Negi
Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, December 6
In a unique case pertaining to the custody of 13-year-old girl Simram, who was “snatched” away from her mother in Amritsar by her in-laws soon after the death of her husband seven years ago and allegedly sent to the USA, the Supreme Court today directed that the “real” child be produced before it as the in-laws had produced a “fake” child earlier to deceive the court.

The case in which events unfolded like a film script, the Court said the girl child, Harsimran, produced before it on July 15 proved to be a fake one as the DNA test ordered by it proved that her blood samples did not match with that of her mother Nirmaljit Kaur.

A Bench of Ms Justice Ruma Pal and Mr Justice A R Lakshman directed all the five members of the family of Nirmaljit Kaur’s in-laws to produce the “real” Simran Batra before it on January 6 to enable the Court to issue further direction regarding her custody.

The four members of her in-law’s family Gurucharan Singh Batra, the brother of her husband Surinder Singh Batra (who died on February 23, 1997), Gurucharan’s wife Harbans Kaur, their nephew Arminderjit Singh Batra, who allegedly took Simran to USA in 2000, and his wife Ranjita Kaur, were also found guilty of committing contempt of court and imposed a fine of Rs 2,000 each for not complying with its various orders.

Finding them guilty of contempt on the ground that they failed to personally appear before the Court on one pretext or the other and for making false statements in sworn-affidavits about whereabouts of the child and her passport, the Bench said if they failed to deposit the fine within three days, each of them will have to undergo imprisonment of one month.

Nirmaljit Kaur in her writ petition, filed in 2003 after she was “threatened” of dire consequences for pursuing the case of the child’s custody in an Amritsar court, had alleged that the whole purpose of her in-laws’ snatching away her daughter was to deprive her of her natural custody and the property of her late husband.

She had also expressed the apprehension about the safety of her daughter, saying she was fearing that Simran might be “liquidated”. She said: “In order to frustrate the judicial process and to succeed in their design, Arminderjit Singh in connivance with other members of the family took away Simran to USA in clandestine manner without disclosing her whereabouts, date of departure and place of living.”

Taking serious note of her in-laws making various wrong statements in the apex court in sworn-affidavits about the whereabouts of the girl and her passport and later even tendering “apology” for it, the Court had ordered transfer of the case from Amritsar to Faridabad in 2000. But till date not a single hearing had taken place there on shifting of the trial due to their delaying tactics, the Bench observed.

“The respondents (in-laws) have come to this Court with unclean hands and with false case. A perusal of the entire proceedings in this Court and the proceedings pending before the other courts would only go to show that the respondents’ evil desire (was) to grab the property and to make life of the petitioner, a widow with a child, miserable,” Mr Justice Lakshman, writing the judgement for the Bench observed.

Referring to the manner in which another child Harsimran was produced before the Court to prove that she was the real Simran the Court said: “The result of the DNA test is now crystal clear that the child produced before this court is not the real child… and Nirmaljit Kaur’s real child Simran is in the custody of the respondents.”

Nirmaljit Kaur had also alleged that her in-laws had fabricated a Will purported to have been executed by her husband on October 19, 1996, four months before his death, making his nephew Arminderjit Singh as guardian of the child for reasons that she as mother did not take good care of the baby. The Will was “fabricated” with a design to deprive her of her right to succeed the estate of her late husband, she said.

The in-laws had taken a stand that the mother did not take good care of the child and she had “abandoned” her 7-8 days after her birth on February 16, 1992.