New Delhi: Women's rights activists on Wednesday hailed a ruling by the Supreme Court that divorced women who remarry will no longer automatically lose custody of their children.
The ruling made on Tuesday overturns a lower court that upheld the practice based on Hindu family law, which favours the father as the natural guardian of children.
"This is a step in the right direction and will allow women to make more and better choices," New Delhi-based Center for Social Research’s Ranjana Kumari said, hailing the move as a radical shift in attitudes toward divorce and the rights of divorced women.
"The fact that the mother has married again after divorce from the first husband is no ground for depriving the mother of her parental right of custody," the Supreme Court said in its ruling.
In future, custody would be decided on a case-by-case basis and the court said it would take into consideration the preference of the child.
"The lower courts have usually taken the view that the father is the breadwinner and therefore the natural guardian of the children and this is not at all true any more," Kumari said.
The ruling came after an appeal by a woman who when she remarried lost custody of her 11-year-old son to her ex-husband who was working in the Gulf at the time.
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