The Allahabad high court has said that police are doing a great disservice by registering FIRs and chasing young couples who have married of their own free will.
In its April 21 order, the bench comprising Justice JJ Munir and Justice Tarun Saxena while coming down heavily on the disturbing trend of the police in registering FIRs and investigating consensual marriages, instead of probing other crimes, directed the director general of police, UP, to take remedial action in such cases.
With this direction, the high court quashed an FIR lodged against a couple (petitioners) who married of their own will, stressing that no one has the right to tell a major where he or she will stay, or with whom he or she will live, marry, or spend his or her life.
The court added that a message should go out now to every citizen in the country that the age of majority has to be respected, and so also the constitutional culture.
An adult couple had moved the high court, challenging an FIR lodged by the woman’s father against the man under Section 87 Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) in Saharanpur. The woman had married the man of her own free will. Section 87 of the BNS criminalises kidnapping, abducting or inducing a woman to compel her marriage or force her into illicit intercourse.
Taking note of the facts of the case, as well as the marriage certificate issued by the Uttarakhand government and filed with the petition, the court remarked that for a missing complaint, the police should not have lodged the FIR.
After interacting with the woman, who indicated she wished to stay with her husband, the court termed the FIR a “serious inroad into personal liberty of both the petitioners”. In a stern message to the woman’s father and the general public, the high court stressed that the Constitution does not permit an adult, whatever the relationship, to dominate or rule over the will of another adult who is a major under the law.
Taking exception to the role of the police in similar cases, the court strongly remarked, “Of course, the case of a child, who is not a major, is different. The police are doing great dis-service by registering FIRs such as these and more than that, chasing the young couple, sometime with ulterior motive to forcibly separate them and send back the bride to the parents or her family. These actions are absolutely illegal and some of them are offences.”
Quashing the FIR, the court issued a mandamus to the respondents, including the woman’s father, not to enter the matrimonial home of the petitioners or disturb their peaceful matrimonial life in any manner whatsoever.
