ACTING Chief Justice, Mr. Ian Chang, S.C., yesterday granted to applicant Arlington Waynewryte Stuart an order directing that his name be removed from the Register of Births because he had mistakenly signed as the father of an infant child. The baby was born to Indira Nagaloo on November 10, 2011, but following surprises, he denied paternity and asked the mother to take a DNA test. She refused, and summoned him for child support.
He again raised the question of paternity before the magistrate, and urged that a DNA test be done. This done, resulted in zero probability that he was the child’s father.
His counsel, Mrs. Kamini Parag-Singh, then proceeded by ex-parte application for an order, under the Registrar General of Births and Deaths, to expunge the name of the applicant from the records of the Births Register on the ground of mistake.
In an affidavit in support of his summons, the applicant said he had a brief association with Nagaloo; the respondent, in 2010, but because of irreconcilable differences between them, he had severed the relationship.
He said that on November 10, 2010, Nagaloo gave birth to a male child at the Georgetown Public Hospital. “As a result of my brief association with her, I caused my name to be placed on the register of births as father of the said child. Some seven months after the registration of the child’s birth, I receive certain reliable information that made me suspicious of paternity in particular, and the relationship between myself and Nagaloo. I wanted (the relationship) to be severed.
“Whenever I invited the mother of the child to have a DNA test conducted, she would refuse. On June 4, 2012, I was summoned to the Providence Magistrate’s Court for child support, but that matter was adjourned to June 8, 2012. On June 8, 2012, when the matter was called, my counsel told the court about my suspicion and about my request for a DNA to be conducted at the DNA Diagnostic Centre at Eureka Medical Laboratory on June 11, 2012. The test was granted.
“When I subsequently uplifted the results of the DNA test, it confirmed my suspicion, as it reflected zero percent probability of paternity of the child.
‘I personally wrote my name on the records of the Births Register of the child, born on November 10, 2011 at the Georgetown Public Hospital. It was a genuine mistake, in that I genuinely believed the child to be my child at the said time.”
Both the applicant and the mother of the now ‘fatherless’ child were in court yesterday when the Chief Justice directed that the man’s name be expunged from the records.