A young couple won protection from the Supreme Court after quoting the court’s tolerant view on inter-religious and inter-caste marriages.
The Supreme Court in a judgment in 2006 had stressed that “inter-caste marriages are, in fact, in national interest as they will result in destroying the caste system.”
The court had in its decision in Lata Singh versus State of Uttar Pradesh given a standing direction to the administration and police authorities “throughout the country to see to it that if any boy or girl who is a major undergoes inter-caste or inter-religious marriage with a woman or man who is a major, the couple is not harassed by anyone nor subjected to threats or acts of violence”.
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Almost eight years later, a couple from Ferozabad in Uttar Pradesh, who said they fell in love and married beyond the confines of their religions at Arya Samaj Mandal here on April 17, 2014, sought the highest judiciary’s intervention, encouraged by its words.
A vacation Bench of Justices J.S. Khehar and C. Nagappan on Monday ordered the Uttar Pradesh police to protect the couple for three months.
The Bench then allowed the couple to approach the Allahabad High Court for any further redressal.
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Their petition said the husband had been “falsely implicated” of abduction by the wife’s family.
The FIR lodged by her family in Sirsaganj Police Station claimed she was a minor.
Their petition, filed through counsel Savitri Pandey, asked whether two people who are “majors” have no fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution to enter wedlock out of their own free will.