The Gujarat High Court has sought to know whether a woman is under any obligation to disclose the name of the father of her child that she conceived out of wedlock.
Justice Paresh Upadhyay also asked whether one should look for criminal angle into the case of a woman who does not want to disclose the identify of the father of the child she has given birth to without marriage even when she has not complained of rape.
The court made the observations on August 19 while hearing an appeal by a convict against a lower court order sentencing him to ten years of rigorous imprisonment for raping a minor under section 376 of the IPC and provisions of the Protection of
Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO). The victim, a resident of Junagadh, had given birth to two children of the convict with whom she lived without marriage, and neither she nor their father had disowned them or denied their paternity.
The victim had said she left her family on her own will and started living with the convict after which she gave birth to two children, first of whom was born when she was 16. “She is a poor rural daughter.
If some lady conceives a child and she is not married, and if she goes to hospital, whether the doctor would ask that you have conceived from whom? I don't want to reply. Is it required? Whether a lady is under obligation to disclose to the hospital whose child this is?” the court asked.
"If one goes to Ahmedabad, Delhi or some other metro to give birth to a child, would the doctor ask the name of her father? If she says, 'Sorry to say, I don't know.' If she says that, I don't want to give that name. She is not complaining that she has been raped. Shall we be able to read criminality?” Upadhyay observed while hearing the appeal. The judge wondered which legal provisions would be violated in such cases. “The pure question of law would be, if some lady conceives, and it is her call that 'I want to have a child but I don't want to marry'.