E-Paper
Tamil Nadu woman's ‘nude photos’, late-night calls cost her child custody
The Madras High Court denied an Ooty woman custody of her two children, aged seven and nine, saying their “impressionable age” made welfare a key concern.
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The Madras High Court has denied a woman from Ooty custody of her two minor children, citing her admitted conduct of sending “nude and semi-nude photographs” to another man and having “late-night calls and video calls” with him before she separated from her husband.
A bench of Justices PT Asha and N Mala held that the children, aged seven and nine, were of “impressionable age” and their mother’s company could thus be detrimental to their welfare.
“The minors in question are at an impressionable age if their custody is handed over to the appellant mother, considering her admitted conduct, they would grow up without understanding the difference between what is morally and ethically correct,” the High Court said.
The Court also cited literature, including poetry by the Sufi poet Rumi and the Lebanese-American author Khalil Gibran, to say that a mother’s love for her child must be the purest and most exalting, her stature was supposed to be greater than God’s and that, in the present case, the woman had certainly failed at displaying the same.
“Unfortunately, the appellant before us has failed to remember her duty and status as a mother and that it is the mother who inculcates good behaviour to the children right from the time she breastfeeds her child,” the High Court said, while upholding an order of the local family court that had denied the woman custody of her two children.
As per the order, the couple married on March 23, 2015, in The Nilgiris under Hindu rites and had two children.
The husband told the Court that in February 2023, almost eight years after their marriage, he discovered a text to another man expressing her love to him. He then also found nude and semi-nude pictures on her phone that she had shared with other men and that she had made late-night video calls to several people. He dropped her at her parents’ home six days later, ending their cohabitation. The children, however, continued to stay with the father.
The woman filed a guardian petition seeking custody of the children, which the Family Court at Udhagamandalam dismissed on August 29, 2025. She then moved the Madras High Court in appeal.
She told the High Court that she was “educated” and of “sterling character” and that a misunderstanding between her and her husband had led to them living separately. She urged the Court to grant her custody of her children, saying they needed maternal care and that she had not seen her children for six months.
The husband, meanwhile, told the Court that the woman had “scant regard for the well being of her children.” He said she would often feed them “junk food” and force them to go to bed early so she could talk to other men on the phone at night.
The High Court noted that the family court had examined the woman herself as a witness and she had admitted the fact about her pictures.
It further said that “welfare” under laws such as the Guardians and Wards Act and the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act meant courts must consider the child’s physical comfort, health and education, and his or her “moral and religious welfare.”
The relevant legal test in matters of custody is not whether a parent is “unfit” to have custody, but the “positive test” of whether granting custody would actually serve the child’s “welfare,” the HC said.
“We belong to a culture where a child cuts its teeth with the age old adage, “Matha, Pitha, Guru, Deivam,” wherein the mother is held in a position higher than that of God,” the High Court said. “Therefore, in the light of the above discussion, we find that the Learned Family Judge has rightly rejected the petition by considering the overall well-being and welfare of the minor children and we see no reason to disagree with the same,” it said..
