India may have got its first child 'without father'

CHENNAI: Tavishi Perara may be India's first 'child without a father', or that's how her birth certificate will read, thanks to Madras high court's direction to authorities to keep the column blank.

The relief, however, did not come easy for the child's mother, Mathumitha Ramesh, who had to wage two rounds of litigation to ensure her daughter got a birth certificate without the father's name.

Mathumitha was separated from her husband Charan Raj by mutual consent, and Tavishi was born in April 2017 through intrauterine fertility treatment with the help of a semen donor.

The Trichy Corporation commissioner, however, issued a certificate showing one Manish Madanpal Meena as the child's 'father', as he had helped Mathumitha during her treatment. When she approached authorities seeking removal of Meena's name, it was rejected on the ground that errors in a name could only be rectified, while removal was not possible.

Assailing the September 4, 2017 order, Mathumitha moved the HC, which directed revenue officials to rectify the certificate. But her application to the revenue divisional officer was rejected again on the ground that it was the registrar of births and deaths which was the competent authority to settle the issue. Mathumitha approached the court again, where her counsel argued that Meena's name had "erroneously crept" into the certificate.

Interestingly, both Meena and Mathumitha's estranged husband Charan Raj filed separate affidavits stating that neither of them was the child's father.

Justice M S Ramesh granted Mathumitha's demand after it was clear that she had become pregnant through intrauterine fertility treatment with donated semen.

Narrating these facts and directing the chief health officer of Trichy corporation to remove Meena’s name from the father’s name column, which would now be left blank, justice Ramesh restrained the official from demanding name of the father for the purpose of filling the column.

“I have made these observations consciously in order to restrain the chief health officer from insisting on any other name in the birth certificate on the father’s name column,” the judge said, and posted the case to June 11 for compliance of the order.