Mani Singh Basi

When did you first handle a child abduction case?

Before I qualified as a barrister and before the commencement of pupillage, I worked as a paralegal at a legal aid firm in London. As part of my work at this firm, I was regularly exposed to international child abduction cases.

As a pupil at 4PB, my first seat was in international child law and this experience provided me with daily exposure to child abduction cases in respect of 1980 and 1996 Hague Convention cases and also cases relating to the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court.

What is your opinion on the law / case law on child relocation in your country?

The benefit of undertaking this type of work in England is that there is a tremendous amount of case law that has been published in the High Court (at first instance), Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. Accordingly, many complicated aspects of international child abduction work have been tackled by the greatest minds working in this field, particularly in respect of the 1980 Hague Convention. There is a lot of case law on the main issues that regularly appear in contested cases.

What do you think will change in the future in this area of law?

With a growing emphasis on transparency, more judgments are being published and it is interesting to see how certain exceptions to the 1980 Hague Convention are applied in different cases. After all, each case if very fact specific and can raise interesting legal and factual questions.