The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a petition filed by a woman who claimed to be the biological daughter of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, The Hindu reported.
In her plea, the woman, Amrutha, asked the court to allow Jayalalithaa’s body to be exhumed for a DNA test so that she could prove her claim. She also asked the court to allow “family members of Jayalalithaa to cremate her body according to the customs of the Vaishnava Iyengar-Brahmin community”.
Amrutha said her plea was urgent because these rituals must be done within a year of the person’s death. Jayalalithaa died in Chennai on December 5, 2016.
Advocate Indira Jaising, who represented Amrutha, said that every citizen is “entitled to the right to live with dignity, and it includes the right to know...the petitioner wants to know her identity through her natural/biological mother.”
Amrutha claimed that she was brought up as the daughter of Jayalalithaa’s late sister Shylaja, according to The News Minute. Amrutha said it was only after Jayalalithaa’s death that she found out she was her daughter.
A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta, while turning down Amrutha’s petition, said that she was free to pursue other legal remedies, The Hindu report said.
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