A question of surrogacy: Court hands over girl to her mother

LHC says it cannot grant custody to a stranger.

RAWALPINDI:

A high court judge on Tuesday granted the custody of a girl to her mother after a foreign national claiming to be her father backtracked from his statement.

Justice Ijaz Ahmed of the Lahore High Court (LHC) Rawalpindi bench, in his judgment reserved on November 8 and released on Tuesday, handed over the seven-year-old Fatima to her mother, Farzana Naheed.

The petitioner, Farooq Siddiqi, an American national, had claimed that the girl had been born through artificial insemination. He said he had contracted a marriage with Farzana under an agreement and paid her a handsome amount to give birth to a child.

However, he said Farzana refused to hand over the girl to him after taking the money.

The court, however, observed that the petitioner could not prove that the girl was born through artificial insemination. The Pakistani law does not recognise surrogacy, and the petitioner has failed to prove that the mother was surrogated, the court said.

Furthermore, the petitioner later backtracked from his position and disowned the child, saying that he never married Farzana, said the order.



The petitioner has also failed to prove that Farzana was a surrogate mother and produce the man who allegedly donated semen for artificial insemination. The judge maintained that if the girl’s paternity is not determined, her custody could not be given to a stranger.

The petitioner had initially filed an application with the LHC. He approached a family court in Rawalpindi after the application was dismissed by the high court.

After his case was dismissed by the family court in 2011, he filed an appeal with an additional district and sessions judge,
which was also rejected in May 2012.

In his fresh petition with the high court, Siddiqi was seeking the child’s custody solely on financial grounds, saying that he was well-off and could take better care of the child as compared to her mother.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 28^th, 2012.