Paternity suit: N.D. Tiwari gets more time to reply

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A bench headed by Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah asked Tiwari to file his reply in a week's time on the suit filed by Rohit Shekhar, 30, seeking its direction to declare Tiwari as his biological father.

Shekhar had filed an appeal before a Division Bench challenging a single-bench order, which had dismissed his petition on the ground that it was not maintainable.

Senior advocate Rajiv Nayyar appearing on behalf of Tiwari requested the court for more time to file a reply. The court gave a week's time to file the reply and posted the matter for further hearing March 11.

Ujjwala Sharma, mother of Rohit, also filed an affidavit supporting her son's claim.

"I was the one who told Rohit about Tiwari. So how can I deviate from the truth now?" Sharma told IANS.

Justice S.N. Dhingra had on Nov 3 last year said the suit filed by Shekhar is not maintainable and allowed the plea of 84-year-old Tiwari who had sought dismissal of the petition.

The court had said it has no territorial jurisdiction to hear the case as Tiwari, then Andhra Pradesh governor, was in Hyderabad and a suit against him could be filed only in that city.

The appeal came soon after Tiwari resigned as governor in the wake of a sex scandal. A news channel aired footage claiming to show Tiwari in a compromising position with three women at his official residence in Hyderabad.

A law graduate, Shekhar, 30, filed the suit claiming he was born out of an intimate relationship between his mother Ujjwala Sharma and Tiwari, a charge denied by the latter.

Tiwari, who was also chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, was earlier directed by the court in November 2008 to file his reply in which he had refuted all the allegations and submitted that the suit was filed to malign him.