Tired of hearing habeas corpus petitions filed in connection with elopement of minor girls with married men, the Madras High Court on Thursday said time had come to curtail such practices. It suggested introduction of counselling programmes by the government for teenage girls as well as their parents.
A Division Bench of Justices N. Kirubakaran and S. Baskaran made the suggestion while hearing a petition filed by the mother of a 17-year-old girl who had eloped with a 45-year-old married man. The court was taken aback to know that the accused had a 10-year-old daughter through his wife.
Second instance
Additional Public Prosecutor M. Mohamed Riyaz brought it to the notice of the court that it was the second instance that the petitioner’s daughter had eloped with the man. They had eloped for the first time in June this year. However, the police traced them and remanded the married man to judicial custody.
Though he had been booked under Section 366 (kidnapping, abducting or inducing woman to compel her marriage) of the Indian Penal Code, a lower court granted him bail. After being released from prison, he ran away with the girl once again. “Therefore, again the poor mother has come before this court by filing this petition,” the judges said.
Authoring an interim order in the case, the senior judge in the Bench said, “It is not the only case of such kind. Everyday, a number of cases are coming before this court with regard to minors eloping with their lovers, especially with aged and married people. Today itself, this court has come across four cases of this kind.”
Year-wise details
Therefore, the judges suo motu included the Director General of Police and Social Welfare Secretary as respondents to the case and directed them to answer a list of nine queries by November 8. First of those queries was to disclose year-wise details of cases booked in connection with kidnapping or elopement of minor girls with their lovers in the last 10 years.
The court wanted to know how many minor children had been either kidnapped or had eloped with married/aged people and how many such cases ended up in conviction. It asked the government to explain steps taken to address infatuation besides providing details of invocation of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act of 2012 against the accused. “Offences under the POCSO Act is not confined to men alone. There are media reports of married or aged women eloping with minor boys. For example, a lady teacher had recently eloped with her school student. Those details should also be given and explained whether POCSO Act has been invoked against such people?” the judge said. They further asked why the government should not form a separate wing to deal with these kind of cases.
