An unmarried Delhi man froze his sperm before chemotherapy, a court ruled it was property his parents inherit, and the government appealed

Preet Inder Singh, 30, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in June 2020. Before chemotherapy he stored his semen at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital on 27 June 2020. He died on 1 September 2020. He was not married. On 21 December 2020 his parents, Gurvinder Singh and Harbir Kaur, asked the hospital for the sample so they could have a grandchild through a surrogate. The hospital said it could release semen only to a spouse and that no law covered unmarried men. The health ministry said the surrogacy law does not recognise grandparents and that age limits in the reproduction law meant the sample could not be used. On 4 October 2024 Justice Prathiba M. Singh of the Delhi High Court ruled for the parents. She held that a sperm sample is property, that parents are Class I heirs under the Hindu Succession Act when there is no spouse or child, and that storing it for fertility showed consent to reproduction. She found no law against posthumous reproduction where consent is shown, ordered the hospital to hand it over for non-commercial use, and asked the ministry to consider a law. The Union government appealed more than a year later. In February 2026 a bench of Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia asked the government to explain the delay. The parents filed a contempt petition because the sample had still not been released. The appeal is pending.