An Indian couple is “delighted” after winning a legal battle to use a sample of their dead son’s sperm to create a grandson.
The Delhi High Court ordered a hospital to release the frozen semen to the couple so that they could have the baby through surrogacy.
Harbir Kaur and her husband Gurvinder Singh said they came to court because they wanted to carry on their son’s “legacy” after he died at the age of 30 from blood cancer.
Delhi’s Ganga Ram Hospital initially refused in December 2020 to release his frozen semen that was stored in a fertility laboratory.
Preet Inder Singh, 30, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in June of that year and died three months later in September.
An Indian couple is “delighted” after winning a legal battle to use a sample of their dead son’s sperm to create a grandchild (file photo)
The Delhi High Court ordered a hospital to give frozen semen to a couple so that they could have the baby through surrogacy (file photo)
His semen sample was frozen at the hospital on June 27, 2020, after he was admitted for treatment.
Mrs. Kaur told the bbc after the sentence: ‘We were very unlucky, we lost our son. But the court has given us a very valuable gift. “Now we could get our son back.”
The couple, in their 60s, have said they would raise any child born with their son’s sperm.
Her two daughters also agreed to take care of the baby in the event of her death and one of them agreed to be the surrogate mother.
Judge Prathiba Singh said in her ruling last week that Indian law does not prevent posthumous reproduction if the owner of the sperm has given consent.
He added that the parents were the legal heirs of the sample as Mr. Singh had no wife or children.
However, during the case, Ganga Ram Hospital argued that they could only give the frozen semen sample to the spouse.
Kaur and Singh’s petition was also opposed by the Indian government, which said surrogacy laws were in place to help infertile couples, not people who wanted to have a grandchild.
Delhi’s Ganga Ram Hospital initially refused in December 2020 to release the man’s frozen semen that was stored in a fertility laboratory (file image from Delhi, India)
But the judge told the court: ‘He was not married and did not have a partner. She intended to use the sample to have a child.
‘When he dies, the parents being heirs of the deceased, and the semen samples being genetic material and constituting property, the parents have the right to its release.’
Speaking about her son, Mrs Kaur said he “loved his sisters” and was “very loved by his friends”.
He was her phone’s screensaver and she looked at his every morning.
He said the ruling had given him a “glimmer of hope” that he could get his son back.
There is currently no international consensus on the issue of posthumous reproduction.
The United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and the Czech Republic allow the procedure as long as there is written consent.
However, countries such as Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Malaysia, Pakistan, Hungary and Slovenia do not have guidelines in this regard.