Hyderabad: Telangana high court has directed an Indian-origin US-based man to personally appear before the court along with his two minor children on Aug 12, after finding him guilty of repeatedly obstructing court-ordered video calls between the children and their mother and violating the court orders.Holding the father guilty of wilful contempt, a bench, comprising Justices Moushumi Bhattacharya and Gadi Praveen Kumar, held that the mother deserves to see her children in person for the first time in nearly 20 months, especially given the daughter’s young age, when a mother’s presence matters most.The bench passed the direction on July 22 while hearing a contempt case filed by Shalini Boyamotla against her husband, Bharath Kumar Pogula, who is settled in Texas, US.Earlier, dealing with a habeas corpus petition filed by the mother, the court had on March 23 ordered daily video calls of at least 15 minutes between the mother, currently residing in Khammam, and her children — aged 8 and 5 — after she alleged she was denied access to them following a bitter marital dispute.According to the petitioner, she was forced to leave her children behind in the US and travel to India in Dec 2024 due to a family medical emergency, after which her husband refused to cooperate in renewing her visa or the children’s travel documents, effectively separating her from them. She had approached the court seeking custody rights and at least video access to her children.The court found that instead of complying with the court order, the calls between the children and their mother routinely lasted barely a minute, with the father allegedly staying present, keeping the television on loudly nearby, and bringing the children to the phone only at the last moment.An advocate commissioner appointed by high court to ascertain the facts and monitor the calls reported no evidence that the children were unwilling to speak to their mother, contradicting the father’s claim that the children themselves did not want to talk to her.Pointing to the father’s consistent stance that the children were unwilling to speak to their mother, the court referred briefly to ‘Parental Alienation Syndrome’, which arises when a child is separated from a parent (mother in this case) for a considerable period, causing the influence of the parent (father) in physical custody to become dominant — reflected in the child’s apparent wish to stay only with that parent. “This syndrome has harmful effects on a child’s psychology,” the court noted.The court also noted that the father tried to get the case shifted away from the current bench by writing to the President and the Chief Justice, and filed affidavits through a power-of-attorney holder rather than himself, terming it a legally worthless exercise and part of a deliberate, calculated attempt to defy the court’s authority.