Madras High Court allows Bangladeshi woman to donate kidney to her son

The Madras High Court has come to the aid of a minor boy from Bangladesh by permitting him to undergo renal transplantation in Chennai with the kidney to be donated by his mother. The court criticised the human organ transplant authorisation committee in Chennai for not having granted the permission after raising doubts over the relationship between the child’s mother and her husband.

Justice G.R. Swaminathan set aside the rejection order passed by the authorisation committee on April 2, 2026, and held that it “suffers from misdirection in law and utter non-application of mind.” The judge directed the committee to forthwith permit A. Monika Rani Saha to donate one of her kidneys to her son A. Atonu Saha and allow the surgery to take place at Apollo Hospitals in Chennai.

The judge said, the status of a mother assumes “a sacred position in Bharatiya culture,” and therefore, when a woman claims to be the mother of a person by producing documentary evidence, such a statement should normally be accepted by the statutory authorities without raising unjustified doubts. In the present case, the mother had gone to the extent of voluntarily submittting even a DNA report.

Further, to establish the relationship between the donor and donee, they had submitted their passports, visas, national identity cards issued by the Government of Bangladesh, the child’s birth certificate, his Class X mark statement, family certificate issued by the Kashinathpur Union Parishad, relationship certificate issued by the Bangladesh Deputy High Comission in Chennai, and an e-apostille certificate.

Apostille certificate

Highlighting the significance of the apostille certificate, the judge said, India was a signatory to the Hague Apostille Convention of 1961 and therefore, obliged to give credence to apostilled public documents issued in other member countries. Further, the Ministry of External Affairs had in 2020 made it clear that those apostilled documents do not require any further attestation by Indian missions.

Therefore, the human organ transplant authorisation committee ought to have accepted the documents submitted by the mother and the son to establish their relationship and not denied permission for the renal transplantation by raising doubts regarding the relationship between the woman and her husband on the basis of oral inquiries conducted with them using a translator, the judge said.

“The only relevant question which the committee should have posed to itself was whether the first petitioner (recipient) was the son of the second petitioner (donor). Whether the third petitioner was the husband of the second petitioner was irrelevant. It is well settled that if an administrative decision is vitiated by an irrelevant consideration, it is liable to be set aside. On this sole ground, the impugned (under challenge) order is set aside,” Justice Swaminathan concluded.