‘Legal constraints cannot control true love’: Allahabad city apex council withdraws kidnapping case filed by bride’s family against groom

The Allahabad High Court recently allowed an application filed by four men to quash the kidnapping case filed against them by their wife’s family. The cases were initiated because the couple eloped and got married against the wishes of their families.

Justice Rahul Chaturvedi noted that in all four cases, the individuals involved had prior consent and were in a romantic relationship. Due to strong opposition from their family, the couple chose to elope away from home.

The court noted that the couple had reached the age of majority, were legally married and registered their marriage, and that all four couples were currently living as happily married partners and had children.

The single judge, while hearing the issue, said that in all the four cases, there was a clear fight and tug-of-war between the requirements of the law on the one hand and the married life of the couple and their children on the other. .

“The dilemma that courts sometimes face may be in trying to justify state/police action against a teenage couple who got married and went on to live a peaceful life and raise a family, with respect and respect for compliance with state law,” it said.

However, it asserts that in such circumstances the court must carefully balance competing interests and consider the impact of its decision on the parties involved as well as wider considerations of justice, fairness and social order.

“This Court has repeatedly concluded that true love between an individual or two persons, whether a minor or close to adulthood, cannot be controlled by strict legal or state action,” the Supreme Court said.

It emphasizes that “when the scales of justice have to be weighed, they are not based on mathematical precision or mathematical formulas or theorems, but sometimes, there is law on one side of the scale and the other side of the scale may carry the weight of young children, their parents and their parents. The entire life, happiness and future of the parents. The measure that reflects and depicts this pure happiness without any crime must be equal to the measure of enforcing the law, because the application of the law is to maintain the rule of law and an orderly society.”

The Court therefore considered that the continuation of the respective trials against the husbands in the present case would make life terrible for them and the newlyweds. Therefore, in exercise of its extraordinary powers under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the High Court quashed the entire criminal proceedings pending against the husband.