Prayagraj: The Allahabad High Court has quashed an FIR lodged against a married couple, observing that the police are doing a great disservice by registering FIRs and chasing young couples who have married of their own free will.
A bench of justices J J Munir and Tarun Saxena also asserted 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.
Criticising the police action or trend in registering FIRs and investigating consensual marriages instead of probing other crimes, the court directed the Uttar Pradesh DGP to take remedial action in such cases.
The court observed 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.
In the present matter, the 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 out of her own free will. Section 87 of 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, the court remarked that for a missing complaint, the police should not have lodged the FIR.
After interacting with the woman, who indicated that 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 father, as well as to 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 minor 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 a great disservice by registering FIRs such as these and, more than that, chasing the young couple, sometimes with an ulterior motive to forcibly separate them and send back the bride to her parents or her family. These actions are absolutely illegal, and some of them are offences.”
While directing the DGP to take remedial action in such cases and quashing the FIR, the court in its decision dated April 21 issued a mandamus to the respondents, including the girl’s father, not to enter the matrimonial home of the petitioners or disturb their peaceful matrimonial life in any manner whatsoever.
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