KOZHIKODE: “If I want to prove the paternity of my boy I would do it by taking samples from your dead body even if you commit suicide”, said Karthiayani, a dalit woman from Kunnamangalam near here to her lover, a man from the Nair community in 2010.
The man in this case, Sreedharan, had refused to undergo a DNA test to prove the paternity of Rakhin, son of Karthiayani. Sreedharan had threatened to end his life rather than face the disgrace.
Both Karthiayani and Sreedharan did exactly what they said. In 2012 when Sreedharan committed suicide, after a controversial special order of the State Women’s Commission, experts from the Kozhikode medical college collected the samples from the body of Sreedharan and later the paternity of Rakhin was proved.
“Is it a sin to love an upper caste man and bear his child,” she asks. When the boy was born, Karthiayani had approached her lover saying that the boy was his son and he should receive her as his wife. But he refused to budge. In 2010, she approached the Munisiff court Kozhikode to establish the paternity of her son Rakhin.
“Rather than my right it was the right of the boy to live a life of dignity for which I fought for”, said Karthiayani. “Sreedharan committed suicide as he was unable to face society. But he should have remembered the haunted life that I and my child went through all these years”, she added. After proving the paternity of Rakhin, Karthiayani is still on with her legal battle for a share in the property of Sreedharan.
