Cannot ask a woman who her child’s father is: Gujarat high court

Cannot ask a woman who her child’s father is: Gujarat high court

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Ahmedabad:22.08.2021

The Gujarat HC has raised a pertinent question on whether a woman can be forced to reveal the name of the father of her child when she reaches alone for the child’s delivery.

Justice Paresh Upadhyay repeatedly asked the question to government lawyers:“If an unmarried woman conceives a child and goes to a hospital, whether the doctor would ask who is the father of the child? If the woman says that she does not want to answer the question, in such circumstances whether she is under obligation to disclose whose child she is carrying?”

The judge questioned so while hearing a appeal against conviction filed by a man from Junagadh district, who has been punished for rape. In this case, after elopement, the couple had one child. While the woman was pregnant for the second time, the couple planned marriage but could not perform the marriage due to the lockdown as the woman reached the marriageable age on March 25, 2020. Finally, their marriage took place in January 2021. Unhappy with their union, the girl’s family had lodged an FIR against the man for rape.

On August 9, the high court granted bail to the man upon furnishing a personal bond of Rs 100 only. During a hearing on his appeal against his conviction to 10-year jail term on August 19, the court discussed about making the age of minority from 16 years to 18 years and any sexual relations with a woman under 18 years invites charges of statutory rape. Hinting at the Nirbhaya rape case protests, the judge orally observed that there were protests in urban areas and the government amended the laws. He then asked, “Why the girls in rural areas suffer (because of this)?” The court was discussing rural traditions of marriages at an early age, and particularly in tribal areas where marriage is not a precondition to give birth to a child.

The judge further said that the woman cannot marry before she turns 18 years of age, but she can give birth to a child. “When the woman is not making any complaint of rape and insists that it was her choice, will we be able to read criminality (into it)?” the court asked further, “The pure question of law would be if some lady conceives and she does not make any complaint and she is not married, which provision would be violated?”

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