New Delhi, November 10 In a hearing that stretched over nearly two hours and saw pointed exchanges, the Supreme Court on Monday overturned the Madras High Court’s order that had compelled a doctor accused in a cheating case to undergo DNA profiling. The bench firmly held that such an intrusive test cannot be ordered without strong legal grounds, especially when it risks destabilising a child’s legitimacy under Indian law.
Background
The case stretches back more than a decade. Respondent No.1, who married Abdul Latheef in 2001, later accused Dr. R. Rajendran of cheating, harassment, and of being the biological father of her child. Her narrative painted a messy picture extramarital involvement, financial disputes, emotional fallouts, and eventually a televised public disclosure on a Tamil TV show that triggered the criminal proceedings
The police subsequently sought permission to collect blood samples from the accused, the woman, and the child for DNA profiling, but the accused refused to submit to the test. The matter escalated through multiple rounds of litigation, reaching the High Court twice and eventually landing before the Supreme Court after the High Court insisted again on DNA testing in 2017
Court's Observations
Inside Courtroom No. 4 Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra delivered the judgment slowly, emphasising certain lines while flipping through his handwritten notes. The bench observed,
“The statutory presumption under Section 112 of the Evidence Act stands unrebutted; legitimacy of a child cannot be allowed to crumble on the strength of mere allegations”
The justices repeatedly returned to one crucial point: the child was born in 2007 during a subsisting marriage. Legally, this invokes a strong presumption that the husband is the father. The Court said the mother offered “no cogent proof of non-access,” and merely claiming an extramarital relationship is insufficient. As the bench remarked, “Simultaneous access does not negate legal access.”
A second layer to the Court’s reasoning involved privacy. DNA testing, the bench noted, is not a trivial procedural direction. It invades bodily autonomy, and such a direction especially where paternity is a collateral rather than central issue cannot be justified unless the need is “eminent and unavoidable.”
The bench added, “Investigative convenience cannot override the constitutional guarantee of dignity and privacy under Article 21.”
The justices also noted that the child has now attained majority, making the compelled extraction of biological samples even more ethically complex.
“The child cannot be dragged into forensic procedures merely because the complainant asserts so,” the Court said, almost reprimanding the lower courts for treating the child “as a material object” instead of an individual with independent rights
Decision
The Court ultimately concluded that the High Court had misapplied Sections 53 and 53A of the Code of Criminal Procedure. These provisions allow medical examination only when such tests directly aid in proving the alleged offence, something absent in the current case.
In a crisp final directive, the Supreme Court set aside the Madras High Court’s 10 May 2017 order, holding that there existed no justification for forcing the accused or the child to undergo DNA profiling. The appeal was accordingly allowed, and the Court ended its pronouncement without issuing any further directions, effectively closing the door on compulsory DNA testing in this criminal proceeding.
Case Title: R. Rajendran v. Kamar Nisha & Others