Bhavani* was 16 years old when she was married off by her parents to a 31-year-old man in Pudukkottai district in Tamil Nadu. The wedding, which was held in 2005, portended the beginning of a dark chapter in her life. “I was young and didn’t understand sexual relationships,” she recounted, “I used to be afraid, and didn’t consent to sleeping with him.”
Her husband overcame her reluctance by beating her. Two years later, they had their first child, a boy, and in the years that followed, she gave birth to two girls. The sexual and physical abuse continued. “He would come home inebriated and torture me,” she said.
Bhavani made several attempts to run. Each time, her husband tracked her down. He would assault her for trying to wrest her freedom from him. In 2023, Bhavani fled with her youngest daughter, who was eight years old at the time, for good. “Everyday I packed a few belongings and hid them in the cowshed. I continued doing that, took all our government documents as well, and eventually escaped,” she said. She had hoped that her elder son and daughter, then 16 and 13 years old respectively, would be able to manage without her.
Then, the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) stepped in. The CWC is a district-level body that is judicially empowered to intervene in cases related to children who are in need of care and protection.
When Bhavani and her daughter first reached Chennai, they stayed in a shelter run by a non-governmental organisation (NGO). The NGO contacted one of the CWCs in Chennai, so that the authorities there could assist Bhavani in securing a transfer certificate from her daughter’s school in Pudukkottai. This would allow her to secure her child’s admission at another school in Chennai.
The CWC helped Bhavani with the certificate. Her young daughter was enrolled in a Child Care Institution (CCI) registered with the CWC, and admitted to a new school. CCIs were established under the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act, 2015, a law that was created for children in conflict with the law or in need of care. These institutions are intended to serve as temporary shelters for the rehabilitation of such children.
“At the time, the CWC officers had assured me that the CWC wouldn’t let my husband meet my child,” Bhavani said. However, weeks after her daughter joined the new school, she told Bhavani that her father had come to meet her there.
Bhavani said she immediately submitted a letter to the CWC, reminding them of the abuse she had suffered because of her husband. She requested that they prevent him from meeting their daughter. They never responded.
On October 18, 2023, Bhavani recalled, soon after she had sent the letter, the CWC, instead of considering her request, removed her daughter from the school and sent her to stay with her father that same day.
Since then, Bhavani has been embroiled in a legal battle with her husband, seeking full custody of all three of their children. While she felt that the NGO supporting her was “god-sent,” she was evidently suspicious of the committee. “I don’t trust the CWC,” she said.
Bhavani’s is not an isolated case. TNM found that at least two other survivors of domestic abuse—both of whom received support from the same NGO as her—went through similar experiences between 2023 and 2024. In all these cases, which involved different CWCs in Chennai, the women said that the authorities did not support them in ensuring their children’s access to safe spaces. Instead, according to the women, the committee members privileged the narratives advanced by their partners, even though the women had informed the authorities of their abusive histories.
These testimonies point to a troubling gap. While speaking to survivors, activists, and CWC officials in Tamil Nadu, TNM found that the committees did not seem to have any official procedures for cases in which a parent had been abusive towards their partner but not their child. No clear protocols were in place even though such behaviour likely signified, at the very least, the threat of violence towards the child, as well as emotional trauma. In the absence of formal guidelines on this issue, in some cases, committees appeared to devise their own processes. These could sometimes be manipulated by the parent accused of violence.
Moreover, activists pointed out that the framework established by the JJ Act—under which CWCs were formed—did not make it easy for aggrieved individuals to hold the committees accountable. As a result, they said, there were instances in which CWCs, not just in Chennai but across Tamil Nadu, acted against the very objective for which they were constituted: the care and protection of children in need.
The absence of protocols
As per the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that CWCs are supposed to follow, when the committees learn of a child being abused by a family member, they are required to file a police complaint and ensure that the abuser is no longer in close proximity to the child. However, there are no general SoPs laid down for what the CWC should do in situations where one parent is accused of spousal violence.
A senior CWC official from Chennai said that in cases where couples have separated and the CWC has been involved by either of the parents, the CWC requires both parents to consent to the child living with one of them. But in cases where the parents disagreed on custody due to issues that did not involve the child being abused—including spousal violence—the committee, he said, could not take any action. In such instances, the official explained, “the CWC should step back, as it does not fall under the purview of the JJ Act. The couple should be encouraged to pursue the legal route for custody.” A second CWC member from a committee in Chennai reiterated this position. “When there is spousal violence or domestic abuse, it is between the husband and the wife,” he said, “The child is not harmed so CWC will not intervene because we have no guidelines.”
However, domestic abuse survivors did approach CWCs for support sometimes. The second official’s testimony suggested that the committees developed their own processes in response.
According to the second official, the committee that he was a part of had received a few requests for assistance through 1098—the free emergency helpline for children, which is functional at all times—from women who had endured spousal violence. In these instances, the official told TNM, if the women believed that their child was unsafe with them because of their violent partner, they asked the CWC to take over their child’s care. Then, the second official said, “We will ask them to submit a request to us in writing,” and enroll the child in a children’s home.
Once the child was placed in a home by the CWC, the second official continued, any visitor—including the mother who had requested for this relocation in the first place—was required to seek the committee’s permission. If at a later point, the mother felt that she would be able to ensure her child’s well-being and wished to take them back home, then, the second official said, the committee he was a part of required that “another close family member, say the maternal grandmother of child” filled out an undertaking form. This document affirmed that the mother would “provide care for the child,” the official added. The CWC would then, he said, “consider the request and restore the child back with the mother.”
According to the second official, the committee that he was with had taken the position that “in such cases, if there are allegations of abuse against the father, we won’t allow the father to visit the child.” Eventually, he added, if the parents were legally fighting for custody and the court concerned passed a ruling on the matter, “we will abide by the court’s order.”
In Bhavani’s case, although her husband used to assault her, he had not harmed their children directly.
When she fled her home and arrived in Chennai with her youngest daughter, she first approached the police for help. Initially, she said, the police suggested that she return. This is when she informed them of the mistreatment she had faced. She recollected that she told the authorities that she did not wish to file a formal complaint. At that time, she only wanted to escape her abusive husband and avoid being found by him.
The police then referred Bhavani to the NGO, which in turn apprised the CWC. So while Bhavani had not filed any written complaint until her husband tracked their daughter down, both the CWC authorities as well as the local police were aware of her allegations. Yet, according to Bhavani, the committee chose to side with her husband.
An activist who works closely with women survivors said she had first-hand knowledge of similar cases in Chennai, in which CWCs had helped a woman’s husband take over the care of their children, even when the woman had alleged that he had been abusive towards her. “The CWC, in these cases, did not provide the mothers or the NGOs they are with, with any paperwork stating reasons for relocating the children,” the activist added. According to her, CWCs often decided to move the children back to their fathers’ homes without even issuing official summons to the mothers, denying them the opportunity to respond to any challenges regarding the custody of their children.
When the CWC acted this way, the activist said, it amounted to “harassment, because these women have already been subjected to abuse at home and have been forced to re-start their lives alone.”
The emergence of such concerning patterns, numerous activists said, were likely the result of two factors. The first is a gap in the JJ Act, which makes the CWC accountable only to courts, or in particular kinds of cases, to District Magistrates/District Collectors. [While the District Collector and District Magistrate titles refer to distinct responsibilities, they are typically held by the same individual in several states, including Tamil Nadu.]
According to the provisions of Section 101 of the JJ Act, a person would have to go to a Sessions court to appeal against or request for the revision of an order passed by the CWC. This applies to all decisions except those that relate to foster care or sponsorship after-care, for which the District Collector would be the appropriate authority for appeal.
To address any grievances with a CWC itself, Section 27(10) of the JJ Act states that a person can approach the District Collector. However, this does not always ensure speedy or effective resolution. Sannuthi Suresh, programme coordinator at Tulir - Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse, an NGO in Chennai, pointed out, “The District Collector already has far too much to do, making it very difficult for them to hold the CWC members accountable for their actions.”
The second factor that could give a committee undue power—according to lawyers and activists—involved the provisions of Section 40(3) of the JJ Act. These provisions grant a CWC the right to restore children who are in need of care and protection to a parent, guardian, or any other person the committee deems fit.
Yet, even as CWCs are tasked with discharging this important responsibility, a recent case highlights the harmful ways in which they can influence outcomes.
This case involved the chairperson of the CWC in Tamil Nadu’s Kancheepuram district, P Selvi, and her husband, M Baskar, a member of the CWC in Chennai South. In 2023, a 13-year-old boy in Kancheepuram levelled allegations against his mother and a case was registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. These charges were quashed by the Madras High Court (HC) in May 2024, after it found that the boy’s father—who was in the middle of a marital dispute with his mother—had coached the child to provide fabricated testimony. It was also revealed that Selvi and Baskar had conspired with the father. They were trying to help him gain custody of his child through the false complaint. According to a report submitted by the District Collector of Kancheepuram, the father had transferred over Rs 1.1 lakh to Selvi’s account. The two corrupt officers were suspended in August 2024.
The misuse of powers
In 2024, Sivagami* sought refuge in the same NGO-run shelter in Chennai as Bhavani. Also a survivor of domestic abuse, Sivagami left her marital home with her son that year, against the wishes of her husband and their families.
Within days of Sivagami’s departure from her marital home, her husband filed a police complaint, claiming that his wife and child were missing. The police traced Sivagami along with her child and recorded her statement. “I told the police that I do not wish to go back to my husband and family due to abuse,” she said. But a couple of days after the police visited her, two women from the CWC came to the shelter with her husband and family. Sivagami alleged that the officials first accused her of having “stolen” her son from home, and then of having had an extramarital relationship.
Sivagami recounted the harrowing ordeal, during which the CWC officers questioned her in front of her young son. “They asked me about my sex life with my husband. I told them not to talk about it before my child, but they insisted that he was old enough and that he should know about these things,” she said. The officers relented only after Sivagami insisted that her son be taken to another room in the shelter. Their pointed questioning continued. She recalled that she told them clearly she did not want to stay with her husband, and that she wished to raise their son independently, away from the home in which she had been abused. The CWC officials were unempathetic. “They started harassing me by repeatedly speaking of my sex life with my husband,” Sivagami said.
After the officers left the shelter, Sivagami didn’t send her son to school for several days. Two weeks after this interaction, she sent her son with her husband to appear for his examinations with the promise of the child being returned to her after the exams. However, her son was never returned to her.
The behaviour of the committee’s officials exacerbated Sivagami’s difficulties. “They targeted and humiliated me by accusing me of stealing my own child and by continuously talking about my sex life,” she said. Sivagami is considering going to the courts, but bereft of any familial support, she fears the long legal battle that would ensue.
As V Anusha—a lawyer with the Madras HC, who has fought cases against CWCs in recent years—pointed out, this was the only recourse available. Mothers like Sivagami and Bhavani had no option but to approach the court for immediate relief against CWC’s orders. “This is troubling because to challenge any order of the CWC, one has to take it up in the court or file a grievance petition with an already overworked Collector, who only has limited authority, making it a tedious process,” Vidya Reddy, who works at the NGO Tulir, said. “I believe that is a huge gap under the JJ act that needs bridging,” she added.
The confusion regarding the CWC’s mandate in cases of domestic abuse seemed to affect its functioning in other states too.
In Karnataka, for instance, according to an activist working on child protection matters in the state, these committees tended to get involved in cases where the parents had separated because of a marital dispute or spousal violence. “CWCs have made decisions on children’s custody by exceeding their mandate in the name of restoring children to care and protection,” the activist alleged. She added that until a few years ago, women in Karnataka had also undergone experiences similar to those of Bhavani and Sivagami.
While such malpractices were prevalent up until 2020, CWCs in Bengaluru city—both urban and rural—are now more aware of the repercussions, said the activist. This, they posited, was because “the members have either learnt from being pulled up by the courts for interfering in such cases and surpassing their jurisdiction, or have, to a certain extent, learned from training.”
Some states seemed to be better off. Advocate Persis Sidhva, the director of the RATI Foundation in Maharashtra, which works on issues relating to violence against women and children, said that she was not aware of similar instances within the region. Persis said that while parents had attempted to involve the CWC in marital disputes through their respective lawyers in some instances, in her experience, the committees had not surpassed their jurisdiction.
Disputed provisions under Section 40(3)
In the cases involving Bhavani and Sivagami, activists speculated, the associated CWCs misused Section 40(3) of the JJ Act to deny the women the custody of their children. The section states that “the [CWC] shall have the powers to restore any child in need of care and protection to his parents, guardian or fit person, as the case may be, after determining the suitability of the parents or guardian or fit person to take care of the child, and give them suitable directions.”
The JJ Act gives multiple definitions to a “child in need of care and protection.” One of them relates to when the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) or the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB)—a body constituted under the JJ Act for children in conflict with the law—determines that a parent or guardian is “unfit or incapacitated” to care for and protect the child’s safety and well-being. The Act says that the CWC can determine this through an inquiry, which, in Tamil Nadu, is conducted by a Probation Officer on behalf of the committee.
Even within courts, this section has not always passed muster as a blanket justification for a CWC’s decisions on child custody matters. “It has to be made clear that the CWC cannot and has no right to decide on the custody of children. Only the courts can decide on this matter,” said Anusha. In her experience, the cases in which a CWC’s intervention was challenged in court ended up, more often than not, with the court declaring that such decisions were beyond the scope of the committee’s powers.
Many times, Anusha noted, the judiciary would direct “the CWC to restore the child back to the same parent with whom the child was living,” and for the case to be decided by the family courts subsequently.
In February 2022, an NGO called Rajlakshmi Foundation filed a petition with the Madhya Pradesh HC, requesting that the power to decide on child custody be transferred from the family court to the CWC. The organisation cited Section 40(3) in its arguments. The court considered a number of factors—including this specific section, the entirety of the JJ Act, as well as the Family Court Act—to rule that the CWC could not interfere in child custody matters. The court further held that citing Section 40(3) to argue for custody was a “misuse of the process of law.” It stated that for disputes in such cases, the “authority and power lie with the Family Court.”
Several high courts across the country, including the Madhya Pradesh HC and the Karnataka HC, have issued similar rulings, affirming that CWCs do not have the authority to adjudicate on child custody matters. However, so far, no general directive has been issued to provide clear guidelines on such cases to CWCs across the country.
While it may seem that such an order would be a salve to problems of overreach, experts believe it could unintentionally limit the CWCs’ ability to intervene in situations that require their involvement. Anusha argued that a blanket order could “disturb the objective with which the CWC was established,” potentially leading to “unnecessary interference and miscarriage of justice.”
Stegana Jency, director of the Centre for Child Rights and Development (CCRD), a child-rights organisation based in Chennai, echoed Anusha’s perspective. She viewed the problem as more individual than structural, suggesting that the solution lay in holding committees accountable when they erred. “It is also important to note that blame cannot be placed on all the CWCs for such grave misconduct. It is only a few corrupt officers who seem to be misusing the provisions envisaged under the JJ Act,” Stegana said.
Lack of transparency
For an ordinary citizen, auditing the actions of a CWC is a formidable task. Activists who have been working closely with survivors of abuse—including those who supported Bhavani and Sivagami—told TNM that these committees often denied the women access to any formal documentation that could explain their decisions. This meant that sometimes, the women didn’t even know why they were being denied custody of their child by the CWC. Without clear reasoning or official records, challenging the committee’s actions becomes even more difficult for the affected individuals.
According to Anusha, the lack of transparency did not always imply that a CWC had acted without justification. “They might have reasons, and they do make a record of everything,” she said. In cases such as those involving Bhavani and Sivagami, Anusha hypothesised, it was likely that the Probation Officers working with the CWCs, had recorded their assessments of the parents, among other factors. “But the CWC will provide these records only if asked by the court or the [District] Collector. It is not provided to case workers, or even to the women who are the victims here,” Anusha said. This adds to the layers that a survivor must navigate, simply to understand why their child is being taken away from them.
Since October 2023, Bhavani has been living away from her three children. Despite the emotional toll, she has managed to find work. She diligently attends court whenever her case is due for a hearing. But Bhavani struggles to stay connected to her children. “My elder daughter recently got her first period. I went to see her in Pudukottai to help and care for her, but my husband locked the house from inside,” she recalled. “He didn’t allow me to even see my child.”
*Names changed to protect privacy.
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