The Gujarat high court has dismissed a habeas corpus petition by Non Resident Indian (NRI) man who sought the custody of his 2-year-old daughter who lives in Germany with her mother.
The contention of the father was that the child was born in Ahmedabad through surrogacy. The judges refused to entertain the petition with the observation that it cannot exercise its jurisdiction merely because the child was born through surrogacy in Ahmedabad, particularly when the parents live outside the HC’s territorial jurisdiction.
The petitioner had moved to Germany in 2017 and his wife joined him there a year later. Both are from Pune. As the couple did not have a child, they came to Ahmedabad to have a child through surrogacy. The child was born in 2022 and the couple returned to Germany with her.
In 2023, the husband returned to India while his wife remained in Germany with their daughter. He filed a habeas corpus petition in the Gujarat HC seeking custody of his daughter.
The bench of Justice AY Kogje and Justice SJ Dave inquired with the petitioner’s lawyer whether the petitioner lives in Maharashtra and if his wife and daughter are in Germany. “When these people have never lived in Gujarat, the case is beyond the HC’s territorial jurisdiction,” the bench said. To this, the petitioner’s lawyer submitted that the Gujarat HC was approached because the child was born in Ahmedabad through surrogacy.
The bench did not accept this contention and opined that merely because the surrogacy occurred in Ahmedabad, it does not confer jurisdiction to the Gujarat HC.
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