When no declaration is sought regarding illegitimacy of the child and the issue only relates to adultery of the wife, DNA test can be ordered, the Court said.
The Madhya Pradesh High Court has upheld a lower court order granting a husband’s request for DNA testing to determine the paternity of a child born during the marriage. Justice Vivek Jain clarified that the husband sought this scientific evidence not to avoid child maintenance obligations, but to substantiate claims of his wife’s adultery.
The Court observed that, per Supreme Court guidelines, DNA profiling is an admissible tool in matrimonial litigation when used to prove infidelity rather than solely to delegitimize a child.
“In the present case, sufficient pleadings are there in the divorce petition in Para-4 wherein the respondent husband has pleaded that he is in Indian Army and was called in October, 2015 by the wife who is Constable in MP Police. Within four days he was informed that by the wife that she is pregnant and she has conceived a child which could not have been known to the wife within four days of the husband returning from his duty in army. It is further pleaded that the child was born within 8 months of October, 2015 and there is clear pleading of non-access at the time when the child was conceived,” the High Court said.
In a dispute between an Army serviceman and a Madhya Pradesh Police constable, the Court found merit in the husband’s request for a paternity test. The husband argued that his military deployments limited his visits home to once every several months, making his paternity biologically unlikely.
Despite the wife’s objections regarding the child’s privacy and the stigma of illegitimacy, the bench authorized the test. The decision was shaped by the couple’s volatile history; the Court noted this was the husband’s third divorce petition, following a previous attempt that failed when the wife allegedly withdrew from a mutual consent agreement.
“Then the application for mutual consent was filed in which the wife did not appear for second motion and now this third divorce petition has been filed which is also pending since the year 2021,” it added.
Upholding the lower court’s order, the High Court ruled that the husband’s demand for a DNA test was valid. The bench sent a clear warning: if the wife refuses to provide the genetic samples, the court can invoke a “negative inference,” effectively siding with the husband’s claims of infidelity due to her lack of cooperation. The ruling highlights that scientific verification is a vital tool for the judiciary when traditional evidence is obstructed.
Advocates Anu Pathak (for the wife) and Sheetal Tiwari (for the husband) presented the arguments.