Mumbai, Sept. 30 -- A south Mumbai resident battling her estranged husband for custody of their 16 frozen embryos told the Bombay High Court on Monday that she wanted to withdraw her petition from the high court and move the National Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and Surrogacy Board in New Delhi instead. As earlier reported by this newspaper on July 25, the custodial battle raises unique legal and ethical issues. The couple, in their forties, got married in 2021 and decided to freeze the embryos fused from the woman's eggs and the man's sperm with a prominent fertility clinic at Kemp's Corner in south Mumbai in 2022. They signed a joint consent form to freeze the 16 embryos. Subsequently, the marriage soured, and the couple became estranged though they remain legally married. The woman, who still wants to have a child, asked the Kemp's Corner fertility clinic to transfer the embryos to another clinic of her choice, but her husband allegedly blocked the transfer. He sent an email to the clinic asking them to put on hold all procedures concerning the embryos, she claimed. The clinic cited provisions of the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) (ART) Act, 2021, which require both the husband and the wife to consent to the transfer of the embryos from one clinic to another to deny the woman's request, leading to her petition in the Bombay High Court. "In matters so intrinsically tied to the woman's body, health and identity, the law must recognise the primacy of her informed and enduring will over procedural hurdles grounded in outdated patriarchal notions of spousal dominion," she stated, seeking the court's direction to the fertility clinic to transfer the embryos without the husband's consent. In her petition before the Bombay High Court, the woman further contended that a provision under the ART Act, 2021 that requires the consent of both spouses for transfer of the embryos, needs to make an exception for marital abandonment, separation and irretrievable breakdown of marriage. On Monday, the woman's counsel Jamshed Mistry told a division bench of justices R I Chagla and Farhan Dubash that his client wanted to withdraw the matter from the high court and file a petition before the National ART and Surrogacy Board instead. The court will next hear the case on Tuesday. Constituted under the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) (ART) Act, 2021, the National ART and Surrogacy Board advises the Centre on policy matters related to ART, among its other functions. According to legal experts, the petitioner may want to pursue the remedies before the Board that is also empowered to pass orders under the ART Act, before coming to the court. Earlier in July, the court had issued notices to respondents in the case including the husband. However, notices sent to him remained unserved, according to the court's record. Notices may remain unserved when parties refuse to accept the notice or may not be available to accept them....