The dispute traces back to 1999, revolving around a deeply personal conflict where a young man, Amar, has spent his entire life seeking clarity about his true parentage. Born in September 1999, Amar claims to be the biological son of a man named Chaturbhuj Pradhan (CP), resulting from a relationship CP had with Amar's mother earlier that year. However, CP has consistently denied being the father, heavily basing his defense on the fact that he was previously acquitted in a criminal rape case filed by Amar's mother under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code. Relying on this past acquittal and previous maintenance litigations where the mother and son struggled to legally establish a relationship with him, CP argued that the matter of paternity was already settled and he should not be subjected to further testing. Yet once Amar attained majority, he took matters into his own hands by filing a civil suit to formally declare CP as his biological father, which would also entitle him to a rightful share in CP's property. As part of this ongoing suit, both the trial court and the Chhattisgarh High Court directed CP to undergo a DNA test, prompting CP to escalate the matter all the way to the Supreme Court of India in an attempt to escape the scientific examination.
Addressing the core of CP's defense, the Supreme Court made a profound distinction between criminal guilt and biological truth, clarifying that a man cannot simply escape a paternity test just because he was acquitted of a rape charge. The judgment, authored by Justice Sanjay Karol, explained that a criminal acquittal merely means the prosecution failed to prove the criminal charges against the accused "beyond a reasonable doubt". An acquittal does not automatically and conclusively erase the possibility that a biological relationship existed between the two adults. Because the previous legal battles between the parties were largely summary proceedings for maintenance rather than a full-dress trial specifically focused on parentage, the question of Amar's paternity remained a direct and unresolved issue. Furthermore, there was absolutely no evidence brought forward to suggest that Amar's mother had an intimate relationship with any other man during the time of conception, leaving a scientific examination as the only definitive way to establish the truth.
The Supreme Court recognized the emotional toll this prolonged uncertainty took on Amar, noting that the young man had spent his entire childhood and adult life surrounded by conflicting assertions his mother consistently pointing to CP as his father, while legal authorities had previously found otherwise. The Court stated that it had to perform a delicate balancing act between CP's right to privacy and Amar's fundamental desire for closure regarding a question that had loomed over his entire existence. Ultimately, the Court reasoned that scientific evidence like a DNA test becomes absolutely indispensable when no other existing evidence can categorically resolve a biological mystery. The Court emphasized that if a definitive answer was never found, Amar could forever be unjustly denied the legal and inheritance rights that would lawfully belong to him if he were indeed CP's true son. Concluding that "the balance of interests heavily favored the child's right to know his biological father, the Supreme Court dismissed CP's appeal and definitively ordered him to undergo the DNA test".
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