Tatsat Chronicle Magazine

Children Of Unwed Women, Rape Victims Have Right To Dignity: Kerala High Court

July 26, 2022
Children of Unwed Women

The Kerala High Court has ruled that “The children of unwed mothers and of raped victims can also live in this country with the fundamental rights of privacy, liberty, and dignity and allowed a person to keep his mother’s name alone in the birth certificate, identity certificates, and other documents. None can intrude into their personal life, and if it happens, the constitutional Court of this country will protect their fundamental rights,” the order said.

Referring to a character in the epic Mahabharata, Justice Kunhikrishnan said, “We want a society with no such characters like ‘Karna’, who curses his life because of the insult he faced for not knowing the whereabouts of his parents. We want the real brave ‘Karna’ who was the real hero and fighter in ‘Mahabharata’. Our Constitution and the constitutional Courts will protect all of them and the new age ‘Karnas’ can live like any other citizen with dignity and pride.”

In this case, the name of the father of the petitioner, who is the son of an unwed mother, was different in three of his documents. The court directed the registrar of births and deaths to expunge and remove the name of the father from the Birth Register maintained at the office regarding the petitioner and issue a certificate showing the name of a mother only as a single parent if such a request is made by the petitioners.

“He/she is a son/daughter of not only the unwed mother but this great country “India.” We need to live in a country where there will be no example to cite for the word “bastard” and let that word continue in the dictionary pages without getting an opportunity to give examples to the young student generation of English,” the court said in its order. mothers and rape victims can live in this country with basic rights to privacy, liberty and dignity and a person is allowed to put only the name of his mother on the birth certificate, identity certificate and other forms. The order was issued by Kerala High Court Judge PV Kunhikrishnan on July 19.

Judge PV Kunhikrishnan said in the order that the child of an unwed mother is also a citizen of this country and no one can violate their basic rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution.