Mumbai: The Bombay High Court stepped in to help a love-lorn interfaith couple and directed the release of a woman from a govt women’s home after a 20-year-old man, her live-in partner of several months, said she was illegally detained there due to differences in their religions and her parents’ disapproval.
The HC said it understood her parents’ concern but added that upon her expressing her rights to exercise a choice, it was impermissible for the High Court to restrict such freedom of choice that the law entitles her to.
The couple desired a live-in relationship, which is claimed to be “an integral part of their right to live with dignity, by making individual choices in personal relationships,” the HC division bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande said. They added, “Merely because of societal disapproval, the couple cannot be deprived of this right, which is conferred on two individuals under the Constitution.”
The youth, a Muslim, moved the HC seeking orders for the release of the young Hindu woman and also for police protection to enable the couple to marry. The Dec 14 judgment, made available on Tue, said the woman’s parents lodged a complaint with Ghatkopar police against the relationship, and police summoned her to the police station. The petition claimed she refused to return to her parents’ home and was therefore placed in the custody of a women’s home in Chembur.
The judges interviewed the woman, and found her to clearly express her intention to reside with the petitioner in a live-in relationship, not seeking marriage at this juncture, despite pressures she faced from society and her parents.
The bench said the boy was not yet of a legally marriageable age. Justice Dangre, authoring the judgment, wrote, “We have before us two adults, who consensually have chosen each other as their partners by making a conscious choice of living in a ‘live-in relationship’ and since no law prevents them from leading a life of their own choice, we deem it appropriate to direct the release of the woman, a major, from the custody of Shaskriya Stree Bhishekari Khikar Kendra, forthwith.”
Upon her release, the HC declared she would be “entitled to live her life according to her own choice.” The man filed a writ of habeas corpus (to release a person from illegal custody). The HC said while it secured her freedom, it declined her police protection.
