A 12-year-old girl has filed a petition against her father, under Section 12 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. The girl has filed the petition through her mother.

According to the petitioner Pritam Bhatti, mother of the girl, Pritam and her husband Rabindra Hazari are divorced.

While Hazari is a resident of Mumbai, Bhatti is based in Pune. Their 12-year-old daughter is at present studying at a boarding school in Nilgiri, Tamil Nadu.

The petition says she doesn’t want to study at the boarding school. Her elder sister, who was also a student there, has shifted to Pune for higher studies. So the mother got the girl admitted to a school in the city.

Advocate Asim Sarode, defence counsel for Bhatti, said, “Rabindra, who is the joint custodian of the girl took an order from the family court at Nagpur which prohibited Pritam from admitting the girl to the Pune school. The court directed that the girl should not be admitted to any other school without her father’s permission.”

The petition mentions: the petition under the Domestic Violence Act is being filed by the minor girl with the help of her mother to stress the need to consider a child as a separate and individual entity and that she should not become a victim of the blown-up egos of her parents.