Aunt challenges court over babys custody
A Dar es Salaam woman has filed a notice of appeal, seeking to
challenge a High Court’s order requiring her to surrender to her
brother-in-law the two-year-old baby boy born by her younger sister,
who died a day after delivery.
FAUSTINE KAPAMA
A Dar es Salaam woman has filed a notice of appeal, seeking to challenge a High Court’s order requiring her to surrender to her brother-in-law the two-year-old baby boy born by her younger sister, who died a day after delivery.
Mrs Violet Deelip Pandya wants to appeal against Judge Katherine Oriyo’s refusal to grant extension of time to enable her challenge the High Court order which required her to hand over the baby to his biological father, Mr Jayprakash Jani. The baby’s mother, Mrs Kavitha Jani, died after giving birth on April 20, 2004.
On April 17, this year, Judge Oriyo dismissed the application by Mrs Pandya, on grounds that it could not disclose sufficient reasons. This would be the second time for the maternal aunt of the boy to knock the doors of the Court of Appeal. Her first attempt to challenge the same order failed on August 23, last year.
Court of Appeal Justices Augustino Ramadhani, Eusebia Munuo and Simon Kaji, who were asked to revise the order, dismissed her application for lack of merits.
The legal wrangle surrounding the infant started when the aunt, Mrs Chetna Joshi, and her husband, Mr Shailesh Joshi, who reside in Toronto, Canada filed adoption proceedings with a view to have the custody of the child.
Mrs Pandya objected to the proceedings. In her decision, Judge Oriyo dismissed the proceedings, as the duo was not Tanzanian residents and had not stayed with the child for at least three consecutive months as the law demanded. The judge, instead, ordered Mrs Pandya to hand over the baby to his father as no order gave her rights of custody of the baby as the latter fall in her hands on “gentlemen’s agreements”.
Mrs Pandya came back to the High Court, seeking for review of the order so that she could continue taking care the baby, claiming that the infant had been considering her as his real mother. In his submissions, however, Mr Jani had told the court that his sister-in-law has no superior rights of having custody of the infant than him.
“Is the applicant (Mrs Pandya), who is a maternal aunt of the infant more concerned about the child than me? Can the applicant have superior right than me over my biological child as regards to the welfare of the infant?” he queried.
According to him, the brief privilege given to her to take care of the baby after the death of his mother was not a sufficient cause to violate his parental rights over the child.
Source: Daily News
