MP High Court: Article 227 is not an appeal, and a DNA test cannot be forced on a third party to settle someone else's parentage

The Madhya Pradesh High Court (Indore) dismissed a petition under Article 227 of the Constitution challenging two courts' refusal to order a DNA test in a mutation dispute. The petitioners, who held land under a 2016 Will, resisted a suit by a woman claiming to be the original owner's daughter and legal heir. To disprove her parentage, they sought a DNA test not of her alone but of two other women who were not even parties to the suit.

Both the trial court and the first appellate court declined, and the High Court upheld that refusal, noting the claimant's parentage was independently supported by a 30-year-old school admission register naming her father, admissible under Section 90 of the Evidence Act, 1872, and that compelling a non-party to undergo a DNA test raised a serious question of personal privacy. The Court also explained that its supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227 is narrower than an appeal: relying on Shalini Shyam Shetty v. Rajendra Shankar Patil, it reiterated that a High Court can interfere only to keep subordinate courts within the bounds of their authority, for patent perversity or a gross failure of justice, and cannot reweigh evidence or substitute its own view merely because another view was possible.