There is also this judgement by Justice S. Radhakrishnan of the Bombay High Court on 14 August 1998.

This case highlights that old adage: ‘Don’t just get angry, get legally even’. The lawyer advised the client to deal with the case as a civil one; all Child Sexual Abuse cases are criminal cases but it was too late to put the daughter through a conclusive medical test. The lawyer felt that the situation was still an important one as a civil case, for this would once and for all sort out many of the matters connected with the problem.

The case has Afra Fernandes as petitioner with Flavia Agnes as her advocate, versus Anthony Fernandes as respondent who did not attend court, nor did he have anyone to represent him though he was served with adequate notices.

The court heard Afra’s account of how Anthony would get drunk and beat her up, how he began walking around the house naked and with a knife, how he had been sexually abusing one among their five children. The young daughter took the witness-stand and spoke of her sexual abuse by her father. Afra also produced the receipts of the various complaints she had registered at the local police station against her husband of his various acts of cruelty. She also showed a bill and receipt issued by their building’s housing society in both their names, the husband and the wife, proving that the flat stood in the name of both, petitioner and respondent.

Justice Radhakrishnan observed: ‘All this evidence has not been controverted and challenged, and the respondent has not appeared and cross-examined. Under these circumstances this evidence will have to be accepted, as uncontroverted.’ Justice Radhakrishnan then granted Afra Fernandes judicial separation under Section 22 of the Indian Divorce Act; he gave her custody of all her minor children; he restrained Anthony Fernandes from selling or creating a third party to the rights of their flat; and this is the most important—Justice Radhakrishnan restrained Anthony Fernandes himself, as also ‘his agents, servants and relatives’, from entering ‘the said matrimonial home’.

In other words, now if Anthony Fernandes enters the home he owns jointly with his wife, he can be kicked out of his own house and thrown immediately into prison;

This is how it should be, because to allow Anthony Fernandes to enter would be—to use legal parlance but unfortunately a line not used often enough in the courts—‘against the best interests of the child’.

Advocate Flavia Agnes would agree that this was, in some ways, a ‘dream case’: a very obvious situation created by Anthony Fernandes, his absence in the court leading to this ex parte decision, and a very learned and committed judge in Justice Radhakrishnan. So many factors do not always come together in the court, most times matters go against the best interests of the child. No one has understood this more than Flavia Agnes as she stood on the Bombay High Court premises with tears streaming down her face.