Supreme Court balances child's right to know paternity and alleged father's right to privacy

📌 Summary:

• The Supreme Court upheld the use of a DNA test in a long-running paternity dispute, addressing whether an individual's right to privacy overrides the need to determine parentage
• The Court had earlier consistently held that DNA tests should NOT be ordered routinely, but had never conclusively settled WHEN they are permissible
• The ruling attempts to balance two competing rights: the child's right to know paternity and the alleged father's right to privacy (a fundamental right under Article 21, per Puttaswamy, 2017)
• The judgment provides guidance on the threshold for ordering DNA tests, treating them as an exception rather than a routine evidentiary tool

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS2 (Polity/Judiciary) — judicial interpretation of the right to privacy (Article 21), balancing of fundamental rights, and evidentiary standards; a strong case study on competing rights and judicial reasoning.

📝 Prelims Facts:

• Right to privacy: declared a fundamental right under Article 21 in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017)
• DNA evidence governed by the Indian Evidence/Bharatiya Sakshya framework and Section 112 (presumption of legitimacy) of the Evidence Act

🔑 Key Term: Section 112 (Evidence Act) — presumes a child born during a valid marriage to be legitimate, a presumption rebuttable only by proof of non-access; central to paternity-DNA disputes.