<p>The Supreme Court has stressed on 'contact rights', in addition to visitation rights, to a parent, who is denied custody of a child, saying it was important for him or her to have five to 10 minutes of daily talk by video calling for maintaining and improving the bond with the kid.</p>.<p>“The purpose of this is, if we cannot provide one happy home with two parents to the child then let the child have the benefit of two happy homes with one parent each,” a bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose said.</p>.<p>Emphasising on the principle of welfare of the child as the paramount consideration in custody battles, the top court said, in tender years the kid would require the love, affection, company, protection of both parents which is not only the requirement but is his or her basic human right.</p>.<p>“A child is not an inanimate object which can be tossed from one parent to the other. Every separation, every re-union may have a traumatic and psychosomatic impact on the child,” it said.</p>.<p>With the increasing availability of internet, video calling was now very common and courts dealing with the issue of custody of children must ensure that the parent who was denied custody of the child should be able to talk to her or his child as often as possible, the bench said.</p>.<p>The court passed its order on a plea by a woman against the Rajasthan HC's order to return to the USA along with a less than three-year-old girl child, on a plea by husband, as she violated the Norfolk court order.</p>.<p>It rejected her plea that she could not understand the order of the Norfolk court and was coerced into the agreement.</p>.<p>While agreeing that an adult spouse cannot be forced to go to America, the top court gave her two options if she was ready to visit the USA, all her travel and stay expenses would be taken care of by the husband until the proceedings before the court over there. In case, she was unwilling, the court directed her to hand over the child to the husband or his parents.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court has stressed on 'contact rights', in addition to visitation rights, to a parent, who is denied custody of a child, saying it was important for him or her to have five to 10 minutes of daily talk by video calling for maintaining and improving the bond with the kid.</p>.<p>“The purpose of this is, if we cannot provide one happy home with two parents to the child then let the child have the benefit of two happy homes with one parent each,” a bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose said.</p>.<p>Emphasising on the principle of welfare of the child as the paramount consideration in custody battles, the top court said, in tender years the kid would require the love, affection, company, protection of both parents which is not only the requirement but is his or her basic human right.</p>.<p>“A child is not an inanimate object which can be tossed from one parent to the other. Every separation, every re-union may have a traumatic and psychosomatic impact on the child,” it said.</p>.<p>With the increasing availability of internet, video calling was now very common and courts dealing with the issue of custody of children must ensure that the parent who was denied custody of the child should be able to talk to her or his child as often as possible, the bench said.</p>.<p>The court passed its order on a plea by a woman against the Rajasthan HC's order to return to the USA along with a less than three-year-old girl child, on a plea by husband, as she violated the Norfolk court order.</p>.<p>It rejected her plea that she could not understand the order of the Norfolk court and was coerced into the agreement.</p>.<p>While agreeing that an adult spouse cannot be forced to go to America, the top court gave her two options if she was ready to visit the USA, all her travel and stay expenses would be taken care of by the husband until the proceedings before the court over there. In case, she was unwilling, the court directed her to hand over the child to the husband or his parents.</p>
