ND Tiwari finally gives blood sample in paternity case

Acting on the Supreme Court's directive, veteran Congress leader ND Tiwari on Tuesday gave his blood sample in connection with the paternity suit filed by a 32-year-old man claiming to be his biological son.

Tiwari gave his blood sample in front of district judge Raj Krishna, chief medical superintendent of Government Doon Hospital B C Pathak, Rohit Shekhar, who has filed the paternity suit, and his mother Ujjwala Sharma, officials said.

The Supreme Court had on May 24 rejected the 88-year-old Tiwari's plea that he was too old to give his blood sample. "It does not mean that blood is not running in his body," the bench had said.

"If you are so clean you go and give your blood sample. Can the order of the court be flouted only because of the stature of a person," a bench comprising Justices Deepak Verma and S J Mukhopadhaya had said.

The paternity suit was filed by Shekhar in 2008 in Delhi high court seeking its direction to declare the Congress leader as his biological father Tiwari had been directed to make himself available at his home in Dehradun today before district judge and a local civil surgeon to be accompanied by a pathologist.

The bench, which made it clear that Tiwari cannot escape from giving his blood sample, however, had agreed to the plea of his counsel and former solicitor general Gopal Subramanium that some protection should be granted for maintaining confidentiality of the test to be carried out at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics laboratory in Hyderabad.

The court had on Mondy turned down his plea seeking to maintain confidentiality of court proceedings in the paternity suit.