Want a DNA Test to Settle a Paternity Dispute? Why Courts Usually Say No First

By S&S Co. Advocates & Solicitors · Published 17 October 2026 · Informational content, not legal advice: see our disclaimer

A husband contesting a divorce, or a man denying he is a child's father in a maintenance case, often assumes the fastest way to settle the question is a DNA test. It feels scientific, final, and far simpler than arguing over conduct, dates and circumstantial evidence. Indian courts take a different view, and have taken it consistently for over three decades: a DNA test is not something a party gets merely by asking for one, and a family court or a civil court that orders it without first doing real work on the record can expect to be reversed.

The reluctance is not procedural squeamishness. It rests on a specific statutory presumption, a line of Supreme Court authority protecting a child from having legitimacy questioned on demand, and a 2026 ruling that restates the test for anyone bringing, or defending, a paternity dispute today.

Section 112 and the Presumption a DNA Test Is Trying to Displace

Section 112 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 presumes that a child born during a valid marriage, or within two hundred and eighty days of its dissolution while the mother remains unmarried, is the legitimate child of the marriage, unless the husband can show the parties had no access to each other at the time the child could have been conceived. This is one of the strongest presumptions in Indian evidence law, built deliberately to protect a child's status rather than to resolve a parent's private suspicion.

A DNA test application in a paternity dispute is, in substance, an attempt to go behind this presumption using scientific evidence rather than proof of non-access. Courts treat that attempt with caution precisely because the presumption exists to prevent a child's legitimacy from being put in issue on thin grounds, and a freely available DNA test would otherwise turn the presumption into a formality.

The Firodia Standard: Exceptional Cases Only

The Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Aparna Ajinkya Firodia v. Ajinkya Arun Firodia is the case practitioners reach for first. A husband seeking divorce on the ground of his wife's infidelity had also questioned the paternity of their younger son, and had obtained a DNA test order from the family court, upheld by the Bombay High Court. The Supreme Court set the orders aside and imposed costs of one lakh rupees on the husband.

This reasoning matters more than the bare outcome. The Court held that a DNA test of a minor should be ordered only in exceptional cases where it is indispensable to decide the controversy, and specifically not merely to help a party prove adultery, since the husband in that case had other material, including call recordings and a diary, that could establish his allegations without exposing the child's legitimacy to challenge. Commentators often summarise the ruling as protecting a child's dignity and privacy, but its narrower, more usable holding for drafting purposes is that a court must ask whether the paternity question can be resolved through other evidence before it even reaches the DNA test application. A lawyer advising a client who wants to pursue this route should run that check honestly before filing, because a weak application tends to produce an adverse costs order rather than a sympathetic hearing.

What 'Strong Prima Facie Case' Actually Requires

Goutam Kundu v. State of West Bengal set the underlying standard, requiring a party disputing paternity to first establish a strong prima facie case of non-access before any medical test could be ordered. Later decisions have carried this forward as the threshold test: sufficient material to dislodge, provisionally, the Section 112 presumption, not merely a suspicion or an unverified allegation sitting in a pleading.

In practice, this means the party seeking the test needs to come to court with something concrete before asking for one, such as travel records, hospital or medical evidence relevant to conception, admissions in correspondence, or other material tending to show non-access during the relevant period. An application that simply states the father doubts paternity and wants scientific confirmation, without more, is unlikely to get past this threshold, because the whole purpose of the strong prima facie requirement is to stop the test from becoming the first step in the inquiry rather than the last.

The 2026 Supreme Court Restatement

Deciding Chaturbhuj Pradhan v. Amar Pradhan in May 2026, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal against a direction for DNA testing, and used the occasion to restate the governing framework for civil proceedings generally. The Court held that a DNA test of a child born during a valid marriage may be directed only where there is sufficient prima facie material to dislodge the Section 112 presumption, and that a court should not mechanically direct such a test in a case where the child's paternity is not actually in issue in the proceedings before it.

That second limb is easy to overlook and frequently decisive. Paternity sometimes comes up as a side issue in a larger dispute, such as a property partition or a maintenance claim, without actually being the question the court has to decide to dispose of the case. The 2026 ruling confirms that a DNA test is not available simply because paternity is mentioned somewhere in the pleadings; it has to be a question the court genuinely needs to answer, and the existing material has to fall short of answering it.

Criminal Proceedings Apply a Similar Brake

The caution is not limited to matrimonial and civil cases. In a 2025 ruling, the Supreme Court held that directing a DNA test to establish paternity during a criminal investigation is not automatically justified, and that where paternity has no significant connection to the offence actually under investigation, a compelled test can amount to an unreasonable intrusion on the person required to undergo it. This matters for practitioners handling cases where a paternity question is raised tactically inside a criminal complaint, such as a cruelty or maintenance-linked prosecution, rather than because the criminal case genuinely turns on it.

Courts have shown more willingness to allow testing where an existing, live dispute and the child's own interests point toward resolving the question, such as a partition suit where competing claimants dispute a person's parentage and the child is old enough that the test causes no real disruption to them. The common thread across both the cautious and the permissive rulings is the same: the court looks at whether the test is actually necessary to decide the dispute in front of it, not whether a party would simply find the answer convenient to have. A client should be told this plainly before any application is drafted, since the test itself is rarely the hard part; getting past this threshold question is.

Frequently Asked Questions

References & Further Reading

The provisions and rulings below were relied on for this guide. The position can change with amendments and later decisions, so check the current text and the latest case law before acting on any of it.

1. Indian Evidence Act, 1872, Section 112 (presumption of legitimacy of a child born during a valid marriage, rebuttable only by proof of non-access)
2. Goutam Kundu v. State of West Bengal, 1993 (strong prima facie case of non-access required before a DNA test can be ordered)
3. Aparna Ajinkya Firodia v. Ajinkya Arun Firodia, Supreme Court, 20 February 2023 (DNA test of a minor ordered only in exceptional, indispensable cases; not to be used merely to prove adultery)
4. Chaturbhuj Pradhan v. Amar Pradhan, Supreme Court, 29 May 2026 (restating the Section 112 threshold and holding a test should not be mechanically directed where paternity is not actually in issue)
5. R. Rajendran v. Kamar Nisha, Supreme Court, 2025 (DNA test in a criminal investigation requires a genuine connection to the offence under investigation)