Provided that birth of a child within the period stipulated

6. Petitioner in his written statement has himself pleaded that plaintiff No.1 was not divorced by him and that plaintiffs are not entitled to maintenance allowance as legitimacy of plaintiffs Nos.3 &4 had been disputed by him and as far as question of legitimacy is concerned to ascertain question of legitimacy, though no special procedure has been provided in West Pakistan Family Courts Act, 1964. However, guidance may be sought from Article 128 of the Qanun-e-Shahadat Order, 1984 which has provided that birth of a child within the period stipulated in the said Article was conclusive proof that he was a legitimate child. Once the relevant facts as to commencement and dissolution of marriage and the date of birth of a child within the period envisaged in Article 128 of the Act (ibid) were  proved and the date of birth was within the period specified in the same Article, then the Court could not allow evidence to be given for disproving the legitimacy of a child born within the said period. Petitioner himself has not denied that respondents Nos.3 &4 were born when marriage between parties subsisted and under the Muslim Personal Law, legitimacy/paternity must be denied by the father immediately after birth of the child and after birth of the child, no lawful denial of paternity could be made after stipulated period. Law has not given a free licence to individuals and particularly unscrupulous fathers to make unlawful assertions and thus to cause harm to children as well as their mothers made after said stipulated period while for the honour and dignity of women and innocent children as well as the value placed on the institution of the family, women and blameless children have been granted legal protection and a defence against scurrilous stigmatization. To strengthen this point, reliance can be made to the judgment reported as “Ghazala Tehsin Zohra vs. Mehr Ghulam Dastagir Khan and another”(PLD 2015 Supreme Court 327).

Part Of Judgment
Lahore High Court
Writ Petition-Family-Miscellaneous
9730-15
2017 LHC 238