The Supreme Court bench comprising Justice UU Lalit, Justice Indu Malhotra and Justice Hemant Gupta, applied the principle of “mirror order” in a child custody case where one of the estranged parents is living abroad, in Kenya.
The judgment was based on a petition regarding the custody of a child whose father is based in Kenya and the mother is in India.
What is Mirror Order?
- When a competent court in India passes a series of the conditions for the transfer of custody of a child to a parent living abroad, an identical or mirror order is passed by an equally competent court to ensure that the conditions are met.
- In simple words, these orders are passed to safeguard the interest of the child who is in transit from one jurisdiction to another.
- It ensures that contradictory judicial orders are not passed and is considered a remedy against transnational parental abduction of children. The SC bench said that the mirror order is passed to ensure that the courts of the country where the child is being shifted are aware of the arrangements which were made in the country where he had ordinarily been residing.
- Such an order would also safeguard the interest of the parent who is losing custody, so that the rights of visitation and temporary custody are not impaired.
(Source: The Hindu)
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