Gone are the days when it was said that maternity is a fact but paternity is a matter of opinion, the Supreme Court has said pointing out that with DNA test, the fact of both paternity and maternity can be established.
The court said this while dismissing a man’s plea that he killed his infant daughter as he suspected someone else to be her father.
‘If you had doubts about the paternity of the child you could have got it established through DNA test,’ said an apex court bench of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice T.S. Thakur while dismissing Monday a petition filed by Rajkumar, who was awarded life sentence for the killing.
The incident took place March 13, 2009. Rajkumar was awarded life imprisonment by a fast track court in Tamil Nadu Nov 12, 2009. His appeal against the trial court verdict was dismissed by Madras High Court March 18, 2010.
He moved the apex court against the high court decision.
Rajkumar snatched his 15-day-old baby girl from her mother Santhi, held the child by her legs and smashed her head on a wall, causing her death in Erode.
When counsel B. Balaji, appearing for Rajkumar, said that it was not the intention of his client to kill the child, the court said: ‘You hit the 15-day-old child on the wall and smashed her skull and yet you say that you had no intention of killing the child’.
‘You have behaved like a modern day ‘Kansa’ (a mythological king),’ said Justice Katju.
