ISLAMABAD: While turning down a plea challenging cancellation of marriage contract, Supreme Court (SC) upheld concurrent findings by three lower fora that the disputed Nikahnama was a forged document executed with a mentally incapacitated man who lacked the legal competence to enter into a marital contract.
A three-member bench comprising Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar, Justice Irfan Saadat Khan, and Justice Aqeel Ahmed Abbasi heard of one Mst. Sarwar Mai and her son against the Judge, Family Court, Muzaffargarh, and other respondents.
According to the SC verdict, the appeal arose from a verdict of the Lahore High Court, Multan Bench, dated 10 July 2009, which had dismissed the appellants’ writ petition and upheld concurrent decisions of the Family Court and the appellate court below.
The underlying dispute traced back to a civil suit for jactitation of marriage filed in May 1999 on behalf of one Allah Ditta, described in the judgment as a 65-year-old man who was “a lunatic by birth” and mentally incapacitated to understand the consequences of a matrimonial contract.
Under Civil Procedure Code one who cannot filed the suit due to incompentency, there is option that a man known as next friend can file a suit on behlaf of lunatic. In the present matter, next friend, Qaisar Iqbal filed the suit and alleged that Mst. Sarwar Mai, then aged 25, had fraudulently fabricated a Nikahnama to pose as Allah Ditta’s legally wedded wife, falsely claiming that her son, Bilawal, was born of the union, in order to seize the elderly man’s land.
The Family Court, Muzaffargarh, ruled in favour of Allah Ditta in May 2000. The Family Court declared Nikahnama in the case as forged. It also declared that Bilawal was not his son. The aggrived party invoked the Additional District Judge jurisdiction through filing appeal in January 2001. The result was same as the Family Court order in the matter. Consecuently, the appealant invoked Lahore High Court writ jurisdiction in 2009.
Before the SC, counsel for the appellants, Sikandar Javed, argued saying the next friend lacked locus standi to file the suit, that the courts had misread the evidence, and that under Islamic law, a child’s lineage should not be denied except through the strict procedure of Li’an. He also contended that the High Court had wrongly declined the appellants’ request for exhumation of Allah Ditta’s remains for DNA testing to settle the question of paternity.
Counsel for the respondents, Aftab Ahmed Bajwa, countered that concurrent findings across three judicial tiers, supported by medical evidence including certification from a senior physician at DHQ Hospital Muzaffargarh, had conclusively established Allah Ditta’s mental incapacity and the fraudulent nature of the Nikahnama.
The Court noted that it had earlier, in 2016, directed the exhumation of Allah Ditta’s grave with the consent of both parties to enable DNA testing by the Punjab Forensic Science Agency. However, the exercise could not proceed as no one was able to identify the grave when a judicial magistrate visited the graveyard, leaving the paternity claim unproven.
Writing for the bench, Justice Irfan Saadat Khan held that fraud vitiates the most solemn proceedings, and that since the foundational document itself was a product of fraud upon an incompetent person, any claims of lineage or inheritance built upon it could not stand. The Court found no gross misreading or non-reading of evidence, perversity, or jurisdictional defect in the concurrent findings below, and held that the appellants had failed to demonstrate any legal infirmity warranting interference. The appeal was accordingly dismissed with no order as to costs.
