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Man escapes country with toddler daughter, Interpol search begins
Yellow Notices are issued by Interpol on request of member countries to locate missing persons, while Red Corner Notices are global request to arrest absconder
The Interpol has issued a Yellow Notice for a two-and-a-half-year-old girl on the request of the Central Bureau of Investigation after her father took her to the United Arab Emirates in violation of court orders.
The global agency has issued a Yellow Notice for the girl on a CBI request, while the process for a Red Corner Notice against the father has been initiated by the agency, officials said.
The External Affairs Ministry also issued a note verbale on September 9 to authorities in the UAE to not let the father leave the country.
Yellow Notices are issued by the Interpol on the request of member countries to locate missing persons, while Red Corner Notices are a global request to arrest an absconder.
The father, who is the son of a noted businessman, was fighting a custody battle for his daughter after separating from his wife, a Delhi-based dermatologist, in the Delhi high court.
The high court had granted the girl’s custody to the mother with a parenting plan according to which the father could meet the daughter for some hours on three days a week. The court also asked him to deposit his passport, which he did, officials said.
The father, however, called the court order a “gender bias of Indian courts towards women”.
He allegedly decided to flee to Dubai, where “personal laws enjoin exclusive custody upon the father”, using a passport acquired from Caribbean country the Commonwealth of Dominica.
On August 24 this year, when the daughter had come to meet him as per the parenting plan, he took her along a with family confidant and a maid to board a flight to Bagdogra with the Delhi police on their trail.
From Bagdogra, they took a taxi to Kathmandu from where they went to Dubai via a circuitous route to gulf cities including Doha, officials said.
Considering “international ramifications”, the Delhi high court handed over the probe to the CBI which has registered a case and started the process for the RCN.
The agency arrested the family aide upon his return from Dubai and he has been sent to judicial court.
The court has termed the father's escape with his daughter on a Dominican Passport and refusal to subject himself to the jurisdiction of the Indian legal system as a “contempt of court”.
In response to the notice issued by the HC, the father, through his lawyers, filed an affidavit on September 4, stating that he was a “victim of gender bias” of the courts and that it was the “love for his daughter” which directed his actions.
Rejecting the arguments, the HC noted that “after having taken the law into his own hands” and having decided “to become a judge, jury and an executioner rolled into one...(he) is now trying to adorn the role of a victim/martyr!”
“Nothing can be further from the truth,” the court had said.
The high court said removing the daughter from the jurisdiction of the court interferes with and obstructs the due course of justice and tends to lower its authority.
