The parents of AI engineer Atul Subhash, who was left distraught by the legal system to an extent that he committed suicide, had filed a petition in the Supreme Court for the custody of their four-year-old grandson. They pleaded before the apex court that their grandchild was missing. However, the Apex Court left Atul’s parents distraught using disheartening words, “you are virtually a stranger” to your grandson. Consequently, the bench rejected their petition seeking his custody.
In one of the latest development in the case today, a residential school in Faridabad, Haryana has approached Bengaluru Police, informing them that the child is staying at their school during the ongoing winter break. The school clarified that special arrangements have been made for his care and supervision alluding to the fact that nobody had come forward from Nikita’s family to take care of the child. Contrarily, the elderly parents who are going through the worst phase of grieving have been fighting a skewed legal battle to take care of their grandchild, which by the way was one of THE dying wish of Atul Subhash, to save him from Communist, woke leeches.
Nikita’s grandfather, Pawan Kumar Modi, told the media that he was afraid of his grandson’s safety because Nikita was financially exploiting them. He thus sought custody of the child for his safety.
Nikita Singhania, Atul Subhash’s wife, described herself as the child’s sole guardian and omitted the father’s details from the admission form. The child is enrolled in the school’s nursery class. The police investigation into Atul’s suicide revealed that he had accused Nikita of demanding three crore rupees to settle cases filed against him.
Atul’s brother, Vikas Kumar, made a police complaint alleging that Nikita and her family had abbetted Atul Subhash into suicide through money and emotional pressures. They claimed, too, that Atul had been harassed in court about demanding money.
Claiming victimhood, Nikita’s family levelled counter-allegations that Atul Subhash was demanding huge sums of money in dowry, which they allege hastened the death of her father.
Also Read: This Week in Focus: These Steps Are Necessary To Avoid Another Atul Subhash Tragedy
However, amidst all this tragedy, their four-year-old son’s safety and upbringing is being sacrified at the altar of an ugly legal battle.
This case highlights not only the emotional turmoil experienced by children in broken families but also a very profound societal implication of divorce. It is no longer a private matter confined to the couple but now a situation that affects the lives of aggrieved child and by extent it pertains to the family and society as well. The pain and agony that children experience in such situations can hardly be overestimated, and the role of local machinery in divorce cases becomes all the more vital.
The tragedy in Atul Subhash’s case is a manifestation of a larger societal issue. The emotional impact for the children in these scenarios is overwhelming and has profound effects on their emotional and psychological development. The emotional scar remaining as an issue following the legal tussle are long-lasting. It is during such times that the conditions are often taken out of the environment and made extremely problematic and volatile. Children become a direct victim in terms of abandonment and insecurity, which has an effect on future relationships, mental health, and social integration.
This is where the logic behind involving local machinery in divorce comes into place. Broken families affect society at large more than just at the family level. Research and statistics are overwhelming, showing that children from single-parent households, and especially those cared for by their single mothers, tend to be faring significantly worse than two-parent households. They have an increased likelihood of poor academic achievement, problems integrating into society, and mental illness. This would then have adverse effects on their emotional development due to a lack of male role models.
In cases like this, the child turns out to be an unintended pawn in a more often bitter and large-scale struggle over resources where a child’s emotional and psychological needs play a backseat role.
The difficulty lies within the existing legal framework of family law that has an inherrent anti-men bias. In present-day judicial models, there has been an assumption made about women being the primary victim within divorce proceedings. This has led to systems and structures that exist based on their needs in particular without much attention attached to their wider implications on children, especially if the parents are involved during their child-rearing years. The assumption that women are the worst sufferers in marriage and the lessons of the system can, at times, miss the emotional needs of children. This would make the child an in-between place between the two wishes and needs of the parents, which are generally only focused on fulfilling their desire rather than about his emotional needs.
This individual-based approach gradually replaced communitarian thinking over the past decades, significantly affecting how families have become today. The rise of nuclear families in which both parents are working and the elderly members of the family are mostly absent resulted in a breakdown of the support systems that would have ensured children grew up in stable and secure environments. High-rise buildings and apartment complexes have further alienated families from one another, and with divorce cases on the rise, children have often been at the receiving end of such changes.
Further, with the birth rate declining and couples seeking happiness over family or societal expectations, broken homes have multiplied many times.
The case of Subhash has been a poignant reminder of protecting children in such turbulent situations. As local machinery is drawn into it, the question is much larger than just about the rights of parents. The welfare of the child should be long-term in addition to ensuring the voice of a child and addressing the emotional needs before a decision is made. What is needed is a more sensitive, child-focused approach that takes into account the depth of pain in broken families and seeks to mitigate the impact on their future.
The tragic circumstances of Subhash’s death and the battle over custody of his children reflect the intricacies and anguish involved in divorce when children are factored into the equation. The emotional cost to children in broken families is enormous, and the systems that are there have to evolve in order to take care of them in a much more holistic way. As society becomes increasingly individualistic and moves away from communitarian thought, it becomes all the more crucial that children’s welfare comes above everything else.
