POCSO custody cases: On 11 June 2026, the Supreme Court in Sheetal Vasant Thakur v Chirag Arora put a check on a familiar drift in custody litigation: making the child carry the evidentiary burden of adult conflict. The case arose from a custody and access dispute involving a minor girl, now about 10, who was also an alleged victim in pending POCSO proceedings. The Bombay High Court had moved from one independent expert to a four-member panel, including names suggested by the father and experts outside the local jurisdiction. The Supreme Court modified those orders and sent the matter back to the Family Court.
From a clinical point of view, the judgment’s force lies in one proposition. A legal process meant to protect a child can become a second source of harm when it repeatedly asks the child to narrate, perform, or defend traumatic material.
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POCSO child custody and procedure
The Court rejected a frame in which the child becomes an item of proof between parents. It placed the child’s welfare, emotional security, dignity, and psychological well-being above the claims of either litigating adult. It also said psychological or psychiatric evaluation of a child should not be ordered as a matter of routine in custody, visitation, or access disputes.
Children in high-conflict custody cases do not experience the proceedings as separate legal compartments. The police statement, therapy session, virtual access order, expert interview, and court hearing can merge into one long encounter with adults asking them to speak. In cases of alleged sexual abuse, repeated disclosure can shift from fact-finding to exposure.
Clinical work with children rests on predictability and trust. A 2025 systematic review of trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy literature screened 3,036 studies and included 15 quantitative studies; it found support for the importance of early therapeutic alliance and caregiver influence in children’s response to treatment. A court-ordered assessment that brings in strangers, multiple sessions, and rival parental agendas weakens those conditions.
POCSO custody cases: Psychological evaluation can injure
Family courts cannot decide custody cases on assertion alone. Expert help may be required. The Supreme Court did not close that door. It said such help must be necessary, proportionate, independent, and directed to the child’s welfare. A therapeutic setting works to stabilise the child. A forensic evaluation in a bitter custody dispute tests the child in service of an order.
The panel model failed this test. The High Court had not shown why one expert was inadequate, why multiple interactions were necessary, or how re-traumatisation had been considered. The Supreme Court treated the shift from one expert to a panel as substantive. More experts meant more exposure for the child.
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At around 10, a child understands that adults are competing over her words. Each evaluator may appear as another person before whom the child must get the story right. Repetition has costs. It can affect trust, symptoms, and recovery. Courts have often treated repetition as neutral. Trauma practice does not.
Twenty principles on child psychological evaluation
The Court’s 20 observations give Family Courts a clear sequence. Child assessment should be exceptional. Reasons must record necessity, purpose, relevance, and why less intrusive options will not suffice. One independent court-appointed child psychologist or psychiatrist with expertise in child psychology and child trauma should be the ordinary route. A panel should be used only in exceptional cases.
The Court also protected confidentiality. The child’s identity, disclosures, therapeutic records, and evaluative reports must remain within the limits required for adjudication. Reports must not contain findings on criminal culpability. Existing therapeutic relationships should not be displaced where the therapist is competent and neutral. The court that orders evaluation must retain control and may regulate, alter, or stop the process if it harms the child.
The most useful part of the judgment is its emphasis on parental assessment. The Court said the psychological welfare of the child is tied to the psychological condition of the parents, and that courts should call for assessment reports of both parents. Earlier in the judgment, it said parental assessment should precede any further psychological assessment of the child.
This changes the forensic centre of gravity. Instead of asking the child again to explain what happened, the Family Court must ask what each adult can provide: stability, emotional regulation, safe access, compliance with court orders, and support for therapy.
The protection of existing therapists also matters. A therapist who has worked with a child over months will know tone, avoidance, regression, and patterns that a new evaluator cannot gather in one meeting. Litigation should not raid therapy records to arm one parent.
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Parental alienation syndrome in abuse cases
The case also exposes the problem with importing contested psychological labels into abuse-linked custody disputes. The father’s application referred to “parental alienation syndrome” and “false memory creation.” The Supreme Court noted this while considering whether the process had become an adversarial exercise aimed at debunking allegations of abuse.
Parental alienation syndrome, associated with Richard Gardner’s work, remains disputed. The American Psychological Association’s 1996 Presidential Task Force noted the lack of data to support the so-called syndrome and expressed concern about its use in family violence contexts.
Genuine manipulation by a parent can occur. Courts should examine it where the facts support such inquiry. The risk arises when a contested label reverses the inquiry in an abuse-linked custody case. The child becomes the person under suspicion. The alleged perpetrator gains scientific vocabulary for doubt.
The Supreme Court handled this without rhetoric. It did not say alienation can never be relevant. It said evaluation cannot become an adversarial inquiry to validate or discredit allegations made by either parent. That is the line Family Courts must now hold.
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Child welfare after Sheetal Vasant Thakur
The judgment will now depend on Family Courts, High Courts, and professional regulators.
First, expertise. The Rehabilitation Council of India maintains a Central Rehabilitation Register and standardises qualifications in rehabilitation and special education. That is not the same as a court-ready roster of professionals trained in child trauma, forensic interviewing, and POCSO-linked custody disputes.
Second, judicial training. The National Judicial Academy has run refresher courses for POCSO courts, including sessions on child-friendly court procedures and judicial attitudes. That training must reach Family Courts hearing access disputes where abuse allegations are part of the record.
Third, confidentiality. The Court protected therapeutic records and reports. Family Courts need strict rules on who may see, copy, quote, or rely on such material. A child who cannot speak freely in therapy because every sentence may enter the case file has lost the treatment space.
Fourth, review. The Court recognised that custody and access orders for a growing child cannot be frozen. Periodic review should examine school, therapy, sleep, regression, fear responses, and willingness to engage. Review cannot become another round of forced disclosure.
Sheetal Vasant Thakur v Chirag Arora restores proportion. Abuse allegations must be examined. Parents’ claims must be heard. But the child cannot be treated as the archive from which every answer must be extracted. Courts now have a clear warning: when procedure multiplies interviews, experts, and disclosures, the process itself can injure. A child-centred court must first decide how little it can ask of the child, and how much more it should ask of the adults.
Dr Manisha Mirdha is Associate Professor and Dean of Students’ Welfare at National Law University, Jodhpur.