In a landmark judgment, the Calcutta High Court has ruled that only the widow has the right over a dead man’s sperm, turning down an appeal by a father to be given his only son’s sperm preserved in a Delhi sperm bank.

The father had moved the high court in March 2020, saying their daughter-in-law had not only refused to give them the nod to get the sperm, but also refused to acknowledge their pleas. The father feared that if the sperm was destroyed, or unused, during the period of agreement with the hospital sperm bank, “they are going to lose their clan”.

Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya, in his three-page order on January 19, said: “The petitioner does not have any fundamental right to such permission, merely by dint of his father-son relationship with the deceased.”

The HC said the sperm preserved at the Delhi hospital “belonged to the deceased” and, since he was married when he died, “the only other person, apart from the deceased, having any right to it is his wife”. The high court added that the “father-son relationship of the petitioner and the deceased does not entail any such right of the petitioner to the progeny of his son. As such, the right espoused by the petitioner for himself is illusory and nonexistent.”

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