My Lord, let me speak. And speak of a case that for more perceptive minds is like an evolving tragedy, in order to give you a flavour of what is made to pass as due process of law here. Mother, father and child; the nuclear family unit, is the basic brick upon which the structure of our society is built. Its health is also the key to a harmonious and peaceful society. If we agree that it is indispensible to the survival of our collective lives, then why do we treat the very pivot of this family unit — the mother — so heartlessly? Can there be more insensitivity by the sole proprietors of our decadent socio-political, legal and religious orders than the unrestrained and absolutely irresponsible license to the male to divorce at will, polygamy, greater inheritance and guaranteed gender supremacy? What checks and remedies do the desolate laws of the land, fiqh and judicial process provide to the female, the wife and the mother? Practically none except that of the dishonourable status of a paid nanny of her children with her majestic ex-husband for a ridiculously irrational sum of money doled out as maintenance. The hidebound Guardian Courts show a pathetic lack of sense of respectability, sensitivity and rudimentary economics (cost and inflation) of raising children and the long-term impact of their bland decisions. They invariably show a visible dislike for the mother/wife and a predisposition towards the mighty male, because that is easy and acceptable in our scrubby sub-social order. It is taken as the gospel truth that the father has a right to visit his children. How is it that custody is not a right but visitation is, just because the plumed male has to be obliged? Has anyone ever questioned why that is the male’s right, whether it is really inalienable and regardless of its inevitable ill effects on the children? I am sure the answer is in the negative. Divorce and splintered families are affecting every third household in our country, just as humanity and good sense is disappearing among men. It is a social epidemic. Being seasoned family men, nobody could be more aware of the misery and hardship of a divorced woman and her children than Your Lordships. Unfortunately, our Family Law, Fiqh and judicial legion are arrayed against women. There is another strange but inexplicable pair of steel nails driven by the law into the burial box of a broken family, more into the body of the crucified mother. It is the indefensible clubbing together of the question of the custody of children and the father’s so-called right of visitation. One fails to understand the grand Plutonic logic behind this arrangement. Just because having exiled the mother, he pays the money called maintenance? What other claim on earth does he have to meet the child except being the incidental parent? Come off it please, let him keep his clammy pennies and spare the child and his mother the torment of having to see the insufferable villain again and again. The mother deserves much more as the child has literally been carved out of her body. She is not a hatchery but a human being. Our Family Law has gone too far to destructively intrude into the life of a divorced mother and her child. This impinges seriously upon their basic human right to live in peace. Divorce in our country takes place at the whims of a male invariably. Unless there is something drastically wrong, the custody of an underage child is given to the divorced mother, albeit with a seething grudge. A guillotine is left hanging over her neck in the shape of the inhumanity of pushing the mother against remarrying or the child coming of age, when the predatory father can take him away with the help of the courts, merrily clapping over the vengeful victory of our sadistic Family Law. Through a brilliant stroke of inverse logic, if a father is not considered fit to be given the custody of the child, he is given a visitation schedule to meet him regardless of his utter indifference to the future of the child when he was chopping him and his mother down with divorce. The one who in the first instance unhinged their vulnerable lives is suddenly considered by the courts to be affectionate and caring enough to provide a conducive environment for the growth of his child. What a terribly conceited notion is this one. Have a heart, and let’s stop pretending. You know very well and so do we that there is no such thing as a conducive environment once the family has already been smashed by him to pieces. A hyena also laughs before he crushes the prey’s bones but that doesn’t mean he is kind. Let’s admit, it is all empty talk; the aim is to shatter the persona of the divorced wife completely and our vile instinct to ‘ teach her a lesson’. The venom so injected with the able help of the Guardian Court becomes deadlier if the father remarries and has children. That beast of a father can never expect to be endeared to his former wife’s children by any stretch of the imagination. This Byzantine persecution of the weak and the defenseless female must stop if our society is to survive. Chengez married Dr Suman in 2004 and slapped his first premeditated divorce by mail within a year (Names and minor details withheld to avoid complications). Their child Shahaan was a few months old by then. For the sake of the child’s and their daughter’s future, her parents made superhuman efforts and got the divorce reversed. Those who have a married daughter and a sense of self-respect would know how improbable it must have been. However, he made no effort to heal the unkind cut and continued with his atrocious ways. Then he again mails his second divorce in 2010 after three years of abusive and violent relationship. Within months, Chengez married his love, half his age, and has a child now. The court took years to partially see these plain facts and passed a rather circular judgment, which is easily a piece of self-defeating judicial concoction. It gave custody to the mother with the right hand and a rigorous visitation schedule amounting to shared custody to the father with the left. This decision is a sure recipe to destroy the child’s moral fibre by forcing a split in his personality into two irreconcilable halves between a vindictive father and a persecuted mother. Ultimately, he will be completely disillusioned with both and become a potential rolling stone. Criminality may follow and then the heavy hand of the law to finally destroy the monster that it created itself. Isn’t that ironic? Amazingly, those in the chain of appeals including the High Court studiously evaded the issue. The Guardian Courts are there to exercise parental jurisdiction and not pass punitive judgments. These are not criminals but bruised souls seeking sense and solace from the Courts. The stumbling blocks in Dr Suman’s case had been well known judgments by the famous Justice (Retd) Qayyum and an honourable sitting judge of the Supreme Court. Their judgments may have been gems of judicial discourse but have also served as a refuge for the less gifted judges to hide behind and rely upon. This has devastated innumerable families, one of them is Dr Suman and her lovely son, Shahaan, who has just been declared ‘ Super reader’ and ‘ Star child’ of the class and is besides himself with bubbling joy and a child’s effusive pride. On starlit nights he is fascinated by shimmering galaxies and the endless spread of twinkling stars. His mother once told him that those who are kind and good to people become stars when God calls them. He believes it firmly and wants to become the brightest star in the sky once he is gone. Please don’t let his childhood romance with God and goodness be destroyed by unmoved courts and an equally inconsiderate father, should the decree be executed. The case has been submitted with due respect and deference before you My Lord. (Concluded) The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com