CHANDIGARH: It is not customary to find an entire courtroom melting into tears as an intense family drama is played out between litigants andtheir counsels. Yet, when it happened in The Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday, as a Briton and her estranged in-laws fought for the custody of two minors, both British nationals, justice Mohinder Pal was moved enough to drop his strict demeanour and wear the mantle of a family counsel.

The drama began to unfold when the judge pronounced that the kids' custody be handed over to their mother Par-amjit Kaur Toor and they be taken to the United Kingdom.

Convinced by the reasoning of Paramjit's counsel Anil Malhotra that the welfare of children, six-year-old Aman Preet and four-year-old Sazel Preet, was of paramount importance, the justice Mohinder Pal directed the grandparents, who were not willing to let go the kids, to surrender their passports.

A sobbing Paramjit told justice Pal that all she wanted was to be with her children and that she would leave no stone unturned to take proper care of them. Touched, the judge directed the grandparents' counsel to "tell from the core of your heart" if it would not be appropriate to keep the children with their mother. To pacify a crestfallen grandmother, Santosh Kaur, he told her that he was not barring them from meeting their grandchildren and that they could visit and stay with them in the UK.

Incidentally, the London High Court, too, had on November 13 requested the high court to help restore the custody of the children to their mother. The request, a rare one from an international court, provided a firm foundation to a mother's fight to win her children back.