When a child is wrongfully removed to India or retained in India in breach of a foreign custody order, the left-behind parent's primary remedy is a habeas corpus petition before the High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. The Supreme Court has held, in a series of judgments including Surya Vadanan v. State of Tamil Nadu (2015) and Nithya Anand Rajkumar v. State of Maharashtra (2016), that Indian courts must give due weight to the principle of the child's welfare — but that welfare does not automatically require return to the foreign jurisdiction. The Indian court's approach is welfare-focused rather than the Convention's near-automatic return mechanism.
For a parent in India facing a Hague return application in an overseas court, the position is the mirror image — the overseas court will apply the Convention and may make a return order, but enforcement against a parent who has returned to India requires separate Indian proceedings. GP acts for parents in India resisting overseas return applications and advises on the grounds available under the Convention (habitual residence, Article 13 exceptions — consent, grave risk, child's objections) which can defeat a return order even in Hague-member courts. GP also acts for left-behind parents seeking the child's return through the Indian courts — where speed and the early preservation of evidence are critical.
Where a child has been wrongfully retained in India after being brought here by the other parent, or where a parent in India refuses to return the child after a foreign visit, the left-behind parent's primary remedy is a habeas corpus petition before the appropriate High Court under Article 226. GP files habeas corpus petitions on the day instructions are received, seeks the immediate production of the child before the court, and moves for an interim order preventing the taking parent from leaving India with the child pending the full hearing.
Where a parent in India faces a Hague Convention return application in an overseas court (UK, Australia, USA, Canada, Singapore), GP advises on the available defences under Article 13 of the Convention — including that the child was not habitually resident in the applicant country, that the left-behind parent had consented to or subsequently acquiesced in the removal, that there is a grave risk of physical or psychological harm to the child on return, or that the child — being of sufficient age and maturity — objects to return. GP coordinates with overseas counsel on the Hague proceedings and advises on the Indian-law foundation for each Article 13 defence.
Urgent applications to the court and to the Regional Passport Office for impoundment of the child's passport — preventing the taking parent from leaving India with the child pending the full hearing. GP moves for passport impoundment at the first hearing of the habeas corpus petition and, if necessary, files a direct application to the Passport Authority under the Passports Act 1967. GP also applies for the inclusion of the child's name on the immigration lookout list — ensuring that border officials are alerted to prevent the child's removal from India.
Where a foreign court has made a custody order and the parent in India refuses to comply, GP advises on the recognition and enforcement of the foreign custody order in India. India does not have a treaty-based foreign judgment enforcement mechanism for custody orders — enforcement depends on whether the Indian court considers the foreign order to be in the child's best interests under Indian welfare law. GP presents the foreign order to the Indian court alongside the welfare evidence, and seeks an order in the same terms. GP also coordinates with overseas counsel where the Indian parent is seeking to enforce an Indian custody order in a foreign jurisdiction.
Custody petitions under the Guardian and Wards Act 1890 and the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act 1956 — where the child has been returned to India or where the cross-border dispute has resolved into a regular custody dispute. GP represents parents in the full range of custody proceedings — interim custody, final custody, visitation, and supervised contact arrangements — with an international element where the child's future may involve overseas education, relocation, or regular travel between parents in different countries.
In international child abduction disputes, litigation in two jurisdictions simultaneously is devastating for the child — who is exposed to prolonged uncertainty and conflict while the parents fight in courts thousands of miles apart. Where the circumstances permit, GP advocates for a mediated resolution — agreeing a custody and contact arrangement that serves the child's welfare, provides certainty for both parents, and avoids the years of litigation that adversarial proceedings in two countries entail. GP represents parents in international family mediation — in-person or by video conference across time zones.
The Hague Convention only applies where the child was habitually resident in the applicant country immediately before the removal. "Habitual residence" is a factual question — it depends on where the child's day-to-day life was actually centred, not on nationality or passport. For Indian families where the child was born overseas, attended school overseas, and had their primary home overseas, the habitual residence question is usually answered by the facts. But for families in transition — relocating, travelling, or with disputed plans — the habitual residence analysis can itself defeat the Convention application.
Article 13 of the Hague Convention also permits refusal of a return order where the child objects to return and has attained an age and maturity at which their views should be taken into account. For children above approximately 12–13 years, courts give significant weight to the child's expressed preference. GP presents evidence of the child's settled life in India, their school, their friendships, their own clearly expressed wishes, and the likely distress of enforced return — building the child's objection case with both legal and psychological evidence.
Where the Indian court agrees that the child should be returned to the overseas jurisdiction, it will typically impose conditions — mirror orders, undertakings by the returning parent, and a requirement that custody proceedings be commenced in the overseas court within a fixed period. GP negotiates mirror orders that protect the Indian parent's position in the overseas proceedings — ensuring that the child's return does not deprive the Indian parent of access while the overseas court determines the custody arrangements.
International child abduction requires simultaneous action in two jurisdictions. GP manages the Indian proceedings — habeas corpus, passport impoundment, custody petition — and coordinates in real time with overseas counsel on the overseas Hague or custody proceedings. The positions taken in each jurisdiction must be consistent, and the timing of each step must be coordinated to prevent the other parent from using the Indian proceedings against the parent in the overseas court, or vice versa. GP owns the overall strategy across both sets of proceedings.
GP has an established protocol for urgent child abduction matters — habeas corpus petitions are filed the same day instructions are received, passport impoundment applications are moved at the first hearing, and overseas counsel is briefed simultaneously. There is no time for a conventional client-onboarding process when a child may be taken out of the country within hours. GP treats every child abduction instruction as a crisis response — because it is.
The legal test in Indian courts is the welfare of the child — not the technical wrongfulness of the removal. GP builds welfare cases through the eyes of the child — evidence of schooling, friendships, emotional wellbeing, and the likely impact of return or retention — working with child psychologists where the child's evidence is relevant to the Article 13 grave risk or child's objections defences. The child's voice is at the centre of GP's approach to intercountry custody disputes.
Acted for a UK-resident father whose wife brought their 8-year-old daughter to Delhi for a purported two-week holiday and then informed him she would not be returning. GP filed a habeas corpus petition in the Delhi High Court the day instructions were received, obtained an interim order directing the mother to produce the child before the court and restraining her from removing the child from Delhi, and moved for impoundment of the child's passport at the second hearing. The Delhi HC, after examining the child in chambers and hearing welfare evidence from both parents, directed the child's return to the UK — on the basis that the child's established life (school, friends, habitual residence) was in London — with visiting rights to the mother in India. The child was returned within six weeks of the initial filing.
Advised an Indian mother who fled Sydney with her 5-year-old son following two years of documented domestic violence by the Australian father. The father filed a Hague Convention return application in the Family Court of Australia. GP coordinated with the mother's Australian lawyers on the Article 13(b) grave risk defence — providing Indian-law evidence of the history of abuse (FIR records, medical reports, Women's Cell complaint history) and advising on the mother's position under Indian family law. The Australian Family Court found that the father's pattern of abuse constituted a grave risk of psychological harm to the child on return, and refused the return order. The mother obtained interim custody in India through the Family Court in Mumbai.
Acted for an Indian mother in a custody dispute involving two children (aged 10 and 13) whose American father had initiated Hague proceedings in the United States and whose Indian mother had filed a Guardian and Wards petition in Mumbai. Proceedings were active in both jurisdictions for 18 months with no resolution in sight. GP proposed international family mediation — coordinated across Mumbai and New York — with both parties' lawyers participating. After three mediation sessions over six weeks, the parents agreed a shared custody arrangement — the children spending school terms in India with the mother and summer vacations in the USA with the father, with a detailed holiday and communication schedule. The settlement was filed as a consent order in both the Mumbai Family Court and the US court, bringing both sets of proceedings to a close.
The practice acts for both left-behind parents seeking return and parents in India defending overseas Hague proceedings — with the same urgency and the same strategic coordination across jurisdictions that the situation demands. Child psychologists and welfare experts are engaged where the child's evidence is relevant to the Article 13 defences or the Indian welfare assessment.
GP maintains a 24-hour emergency family law line — because child abduction does not happen during office hours.
India's non-signatory status explained — and the legal remedies available to left-behind parents and to parents in India facing overseas proceedings.
Read Guide →The grave risk exception, consent and acquiescence, and the child's objections — and the evidence required to succeed on each in UK, Australian, US, and Singapore proceedings.
Read Insight →If your child has been taken abroad without your consent, retained overseas beyond an agreed date, or brought to India by the other parent — contact GP immediately. Every hour matters.
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