Aditya Chandra, the seven-year-old son of an estranged NRI couple engaged in a legal battle for his custody, on Wednesday created a flutter outside a court hall in the Supreme Court by insisting he wants to stay with his mother.

“I want to stay with my mother only,” the boy muttered before newspersons after the apex court adjourned the case till Tuesday next to enable the mother Vijayasree Voora, to file her reply. The boy was later whisked away by CBI officials to a guest house where he is under the agency’s protective custody.

The court, during the brief hearing, orally permitted the father Ravichandran to talk to his son briefly but said the boy would continue to be in the CBI’s protective custody at the CPWD guest house here until the issue was resolved. However, when the father attempted to speak to his son outside the court, the boy avoided him and instead kept insisting that he wants to be only with his mother.

On October 27, the CBI had produced Vijayasree Voora, who along with her son Aditya Chandra, had fled the US after a divorce dispute with Ravichandran.

A Bench of Justices Tarun Chatterji and G S Singhvi while declining immediate custody to either of the couple, directed the CBI to supervise the custody of the child.

The apex court, at the last hearing expressed displeasure at the failure of the police of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in tracking down the mother and son. It was only after CBI took up the investigations on August 29 that the mother and child were traced on October 25.

... contd.