Kochi: The Kerala High Court did not take into consideration the habeas corpus plea filed by Anupama S Chandran, the 23-year-old woman who recently accused her parents of forcefully taking away her newborn and giving the baby up for adoption via the Child Welfare Centre at Thycaud in Thiruvananthapuram.
Ruling that the child was not in illegal custody, the Court gave Anupama, the former leader of the Left-wing students' organisation - the Students' Federation of India (SFI), some more time to withdraw the plea. It also warned that the case will be rejected should she persist with the Division Bench citing that there was no need for it to intervene when the matter of who owns custody of the child is still being considered before a Family Court.
Anupama had filed a habeas corpus plea before the High Court seeking protection of the rights of her child who was denied maternal intimacy. The habeas corpus is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court summons the custodian of the person before it to determine whether the detention is lawful.
Anupama withdrew the habeas corpus petition following the High Court's dismissal.
However, State laws forbid revealing the identity of the parents who adopt a child.
Earlier, Anupama, who is the daughter of CPM local committee member P S Jayachandran, has accused her parents of taking her baby from her soon after its birth a year ago.
According to her, the police refused to register a case against her influential family members despite making repeated attempts since April this year.
She has also alleged that the Council for Child Welfare's General Secretary Shiju Khan had helped the accused to keep her child away.
However, airing her concerns to the party leadership has not yielded any result, Anupama said.
Despite lodging a formal complaint, neither the party's Acting Secretary A Vijayaraghavan nor the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has paid her any heed, she said.
She gave birth to a child out of wedlock when in a relationship with Ajith, a member of the party's youth wing DYFI.
Anupama's parents, who were against the relationship, had forcefully taken away the boy child, three days after she was discharged from the hospital post-delivery.
The baby is yet to be traced.
She left home in April and has been living with Ajith since then.
Meanwhile, the police said that a case was registered on Tuesday against six people including her parents, sister and husband and father's two friends, and said the delay happened as they were waiting for the legal opinion. Multiple charges, under IPC Section 343 (wrongful confinement), 361 (kidnapping from wrongful guardianship), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and so on, were imposed against the accused, they said.
Anupama's father Jayachandran has reportedly admitted that the child was separated from his daughter. However, he maintains that it was done with her consent.
However, Anupama alleges that her parents had forced her to sign a paper.
According to the father's statement, the child was placed in 'Ammathottil', the cradle in front of the state-run Child Welfare Centre at Thycaud here last October.
As per the rules of the centre, when they receive a child in the cradle, they would keep it with them for the next two months. If no one comes claiming the child's ownership, the centre would allow the public to adopt the infant.
