Widow moves Delhi HC to surrender custody of adopted son with disability

A 56-year-old widow has moved the Delhi High Court seeking to hand over custody of her adopted teenage son. She cited his escalating aggression and hypersexual behaviour, later diagnosed as an intellectual disability, which she is unable to manage.

A 56-year-old widow, describing years of aggression, theft and hypersexual behaviour by her adopted teenage son, has moved the Delhi High Court seeking directions to hand over his custody to the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) or any government or private organisation the court considers appropriate a plea that reads less like a legal filing and more like an exhausted mother's plea for help she can no longer provide alone.

The petition describes a household living under quiet strain an ageing mother, her widowed daughter and an unmarried sister, with no adult male member, who say they no longer feel safe or equipped to manage the 13-year-old's escalating behavioural difficulties, later attributed by doctors to an intellectual disability. The petitioner has told the court that her own age-related health conditions leave her unable to continue as his sole caregiver.

Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, while issuing notice to the Union of India, CARA, the concerned Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and the child, listed the matter for further hearing on September 30.

The Adoption and Subsequent Struggles

According to the petition, the woman and her late husband adopted the boy in 2018 through CARA, when he was living in an orphanage in Assam, with legal clearance for the adoption granted by the District Court at Bijni the same year. She recalls it as a decision made in hope the couple, unable to have biological children together, wanted to build a family and give a child a home.

That hope, the petition says, began to fray within months. The boy was expelled from school after an incident involving a young classmate, the first in what the petitioner describes as a recurring pattern across several schools that followed. The family initially put it down to a phase a child unsettled by a new home, a new city, a new life. It wasn't.

Worsening Situation and Diagnosis

In May 2021, her husband died, and with him, she says, went whatever stability the household had left. Grieving and now the family's sole anchor, she moved back to her mother's home in Aligarh only to watch the boy's conduct worsen further: repeated aggression, money and valuables going missing from the house, and a police complaint she eventually asked to have withdrawn, reluctant to see a child of his age formally pursued by the law. A subsequent medical evaluation diagnosed him with an intellectual disability accompanied by hypersexual behaviour, a condition she says requires specialised care that her small, ageing household is simply not equipped to give him.

Prayer Before the Court

In her prayer before the court, the petitioner has sought a writ of mandamus "directing that custody of Son be handed over to CARA or any government organization or any private organization, as may be deemed appropriate by this Hon'ble Court." She has also sought a direction to CARA or the CWC "to provide all necessary medical care and treatment" to the boy, "for which the petitioner undertakes to bear the expenses to the best of her financial capacity." (ANI)

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