Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has allowed a petition filed by a woman seeking to correct her daughter’s birth certificate by replacing the name of her ex-husband with that of the child’s biological father.A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Ravindra Ghuge and Justice Ranjitsinha Bhonsale, in an order passed on Monday, took into consideration the DNA report of the girl that proved the paternity and also the affidavit submitted by her parents stating they are her biological father and mother.The court directed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to issue a fresh birth certificate to the girl by deleting the name of the ex-husband of the woman from the father’s column and adding the name of the biological father.The woman, in her plea filed through advocate Uday Warunjikar, said she got married to a man in Feb 2006, but no child was born out of the wedlock. Due to differences, the couple started living separately and in 2013 the duo got divorced.When the estranged couple was living separately and before the divorce decree, the woman developed physical relations with another man with whom she had a baby girl in Dec 2009.After the divorce order was passed in 2013, the woman got married to her boyfriend.According to the plea, since the girl was born out of an extramarital relation, the woman gave the name of her then-husband in the father’s column in the birth certificate issued in March 2010.After the woman got divorced and married her boyfriend, she approached the BMC seeking correction of the name of the biological father in the girl’s birth certificate.However, the civic body refused the woman’s request for correction in the birth certificate, prompting her to move the HC.In support of her claims, the woman submitted to the court a DNA test conducted for the purpose of establishing paternity and an affidavit stating that the biological father of her child was her boyfriend, whom she has now married.The court, after perusing the report and the affidavit, allowed the petition and directed the BMC to issue a fresh birth certificate to the girl by deleting the name of the ex-husband of the woman from the father’s column and adding the name of the biological father. PTI
