Bombay HC on refusing divorced woman for child adoption says it reflects medieval conservative concepts

Bombay High Court has said refusing a divorced woman to adopt a child on the ground that she is working and hence would not be able to give personal attention to the child reflects a mindset of medieval conservative concepts.

The court in its order on Tuesday allowed a 47-year-old woman to adopt her four-year-old niece. A single bench of Justice Gauri Godse in the order said a single parent is bound to be a working person, single parent cannot be held ineligible to be an adoptive parent on the ground that he or she is a working person, it said.

HC passed the order on the petition filed by Shabnamjahan Ansari, a teacher by profession, challenging an order of a civil court at Bhusawal (in Jalgaon district of Maharashtra) in March 2022 rejecting her application to adopt a minor girl child on the ground that she was a divorcee and a working woman.

Civil court had in its order said since Ansari was a working woman and a divorcee, she would not be able to give personal attention to the child and that the child ought to be with her biological parents. The woman in her petition in the HC said such observation by the lower court was perverse and unjust.

The comparison done by the court between the biological mother being a housewife and the prospective adoptive mother (single parent) being a working lady reflects a mindset of the medieval conservative concepts of a family, Justice Godse observed.

It said all statutory compliances for adoption in the present case have been done and the lower court rejected the application only on one ground that the adoptive parent is a working lady. The reason recorded by the competent court is unfounded, illegal, perverse, unjust and unacceptable, the high court said in its order.