One can arrive at the same conclusion without using an entirely tortured and irrational basis as the reason!
Many customary laws… have this provision that is based on a different presumption or reason.
The traditional presumption first arose from the usual desire to claim a child as an asset by the paternal family (not restricted to the father as a single unit) on the force of the bride price they had paid and which entitles them to any and every fruit of the womb covered during the validity of the price they had paid. And, peripherally, a lack of technology to conclusively determine paternity.
The Evidence Act follows these customary law foundations to expand the presumption to a rebuttable (not conclusive) presumption that the fruit of the womb even beyond traditional marriages belongs to the putative father and discerned mother in a statutory marriage when born by the wife within 280 days after dissolution of the marriage.
The important focus is that it is merely a presumption but one which is rebuttable by evidence especially from the advances wrought by technology!
Note that even under the tortured reasoning offered by the court as shown by your headline report of the judgment, the court had even inadvertently reduced the amplitude or vista of the presumption under both the customary laws of many communities and for the Evidence Act extensions for all marriages by holding that their decision has effect only if at the time in question the putative parents were still married and had access to each other.
This shows that, confusingly, the honourable court had suggested that paternity is based solely on the privacy considerations of the putative parents and dignity considerations of the baby regardless of the outcome of biology and actual truth, on the one hand. Yet, on the other hand, later in the same reasoning, the honourable court still, as it were, insists on biology by invoking the necessity of access to themselves of the two putative parents during the relevant (gestation) period.
On the article, What if a DNA test showed you weren’t really the father?
The difference between sociology and biology.
Biology addresses the question whether you’re actually the father of the child you’ve been bringing up since birth as yours.
Sociology addresses the impact of the bond you both have since developed during this upbringing and whether or not it ought to force you to sever that link solely on your discovery of the truth of a wicked woman who lied to both her husband and son about the real truth of their biological dissonance…
