New Delhi, May 17: A child’s mother may be its natural guardian but she cannot automatically gain custody in a dispute, the Supreme Court has ruled.

It said judges must look into a child’s emotional well-being while deciding who the boy or girl should live with if the parents divorce or separate.

A two-judge bench upheld a high court order allowing 10-year-old Satyajeet to stay on with his father in Allahabad.

“Stability and security of the child is also an essential ingredient for full development of (the) child’s talent and personality,” the apex court observed.

The father and the mother, a teacher, had a love marriage in 1996 but fell out two years later shortly after the boy’s birth. Satyajeet’s mother accused his father of having hidden from her the fact that he was jobless.

She alleged that he was addicted to drinking and smoking and hung out with bad characters. She claimed she had to support him and his family from her meagre income and was often subjected to physical violence.

The woman left her husband and the baby Satyajeet and moved to Calcutta, where her parents lived. After the divorce came through in 2002, she took up a teacher’s job in Panipat.

A year later, she moved the family court in Allahabad seeking custody of the child. But the father cited how she had left Satyajeet even before he had turned three, and argued that she had no emotional ties with the boy.

He claimed the child was studying in a good school for which he paid an annual fee of Rs 25,000 and that he had nominated the boy in his insurance policy. He said he owned a house, a telephone and a car whereas his former wife had no house of her own.

However, the family court noted that while the woman was a teacher earning Rs 22,000 a month, the father was a contractor with no regular source of income. Also, Satyajeet lacked care and protection in his father’s house, the court said, directing the boy be handed over to his mother within a month.

The husband appealed in the high court, which granted interim custody to the mother but, after taking the help of psychology experts, gave the child back to the father.

Satyajeet, who had lived with his mother for some time, too, said he wanted to go back to his father. He told the court his mother, too, should come and live with his father.

The high court noted that the father was financially sound and would be able to meet all the boy’s needs whereas the mother would not since she was living alone.

It noted that the child had not been able to reconcile himself to his “dislocation” from Allahabad and the denial of his father’s love. But the mother was allowed to meet the child whenever she wanted to. The mother then went to the Supreme Court.

Except for a very short period when he was with his mother, Satyajeet has been living and studying in Allahabad and has friends there, the court reasoned. Panipat would be an entirely new environment for him.

“We are convinced that the dislocation of Satyajeet… from Allahabad, where he has grown up in sufficiently good surroundings, would not only impede his schooling, it may also cause emotional strain and depression,” the court said.

It noted that the child had taken to complaining and crying and appeared reluctant when the court suggested he live with his mother. “Watching his reaction, we dropped the proposal,” the court said.