The Congress veteran has been ordered to appear in Delhi High Court on June 1 to give his blood sample to ascertain whether a 31-year-old man is his biological son.
Tiwari, 87, has exhausted all legal options to stall Rohit Shekhar’s bid to force a DNA test. But the buzz in Congress circles is that the former Union minister, who has served as governor and chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, may avoid an appearance.
Legal experts, however, said such a course might invite contempt of court.
In an order passed this February, a high court bench of judges Vikramajit Sen and Siddharth Mridul had asked Tiwari to undergo the DNA test.
In view of his advanced age, the court had said “irreparable loss is bound to visit the plaintiff (Rohit Shekhar)” if the test is not done immediately as “vital evidence may be lost forever”.
In recent days, Tiwari has been active in Uttarakhand, which has virtually robbed him of the excuse of non-appearance on grounds of “ill-health”. On May 21, he was the chief guest at a school programme. A day earlier he was photographed visiting an information technology park. He even travelled to Haldwani, over 100km from Dehradun.
The 1979-born Rohit, a lawyer himself, and his mother Ujjwala Sharma have petitioned the high court joint registrar, who has been authorised to supervise the sample collection from the three, to be allowed to accompany the samples to the government-run Centre for DNA, Fingerprinting and Diagnostics laboratory at Hyderabad.
Rohit expressed fears that the samples might be tampered with. Tiwari was “still an influential” person, he said.
Rohit had approached the high court in 2007-08 claiming he was born out of an intimate relationship between his mother and Tiwari. In 2009, Rohit and Ujjwala’s husband B.P. Sharma submitted a DNA report that concluded that he was not Rohit’s biological parent.
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THE TELEGRAPHG
Tiwari, 87, has exhausted all legal options to stall Rohit Shekhar’s bid to force a DNA test. But the buzz in Congress circles is that the former Union minister, who has served as governor and chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, may avoid an appearance.
Legal experts, however, said such a course might invite contempt of court.
In an order passed this February, a high court bench of judges Vikramajit Sen and Siddharth Mridul had asked Tiwari to undergo the DNA test.
In view of his advanced age, the court had said “irreparable loss is bound to visit the plaintiff (Rohit Shekhar)” if the test is not done immediately as “vital evidence may be lost forever”.
In recent days, Tiwari has been active in Uttarakhand, which has virtually robbed him of the excuse of non-appearance on grounds of “ill-health”. On May 21, he was the chief guest at a school programme. A day earlier he was photographed visiting an information technology park. He even travelled to Haldwani, over 100km from Dehradun.
The 1979-born Rohit, a lawyer himself, and his mother Ujjwala Sharma have petitioned the high court joint registrar, who has been authorised to supervise the sample collection from the three, to be allowed to accompany the samples to the government-run Centre for DNA, Fingerprinting and Diagnostics laboratory at Hyderabad.
Rohit expressed fears that the samples might be tampered with. Tiwari was “still an influential” person, he said.
Rohit had approached the high court in 2007-08 claiming he was born out of an intimate relationship between his mother and Tiwari. In 2009, Rohit and Ujjwala’s husband B.P. Sharma submitted a DNA report that concluded that he was not Rohit’s biological parent.
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THE TELEGRAPHG
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