The Punjab and Haryana High Court Has Dismissed a Live-In Couple's Plea for Protection

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has dismissed the plea of a live-in couple for protection of their life and liberty. The couple, Gulza Kumari (18 years old) and Gurwinder Singh (21 years old) mentioned in their petition that the girl's parents opposed their getting married. When forced to marry a man of their choice, Gulza ran away, and she and Gurwinder have been living together ever since, for the past year. The couple fears a threat to their life by the girl's parents, who they say have considerable political clout and connections and have asked for the court's protection. They also added that the boy's parents were not opposed to their current living arrangement. The petition goes on to claim that such live-in relationships put an end to the demand for dowry and that they have entered this relationship out of their own free will. Having failed to secure protection from the police, they approached the High Court to resolve their grievance.

Responding to their plea, Justice HS Madan issued a brief order (Read it here). Given below is a statement issued:

“In the considered view of this bench, if such protection as claimed is granted, the entire social fabric of the society would get disturbed. Hence, no ground to grant the protection is made out.”

In a 2018 Supreme Court hearing (Shakti Vahini v Union of India and others), the court had held that "assertion of choice is an insegregeble fact of liberty and dignity". The Supreme Court had ruled that it wanted to protect married and live-in couples from any threat of violence. “Sometimes, a young man can become the victim of honour killing or receive violent treatment at the hands of the family members of the girl when he has fallen in love or has entered into marriage. The collective behaves like a patriarchal monarch that treats the wives, sisters and daughters subordinate, even servile or self-sacrificing, persons moving in a physical frame having no individual autonomy, desire or identity. The concept of status is accentuated by the male members of the community and a sense of masculine dominance becomes the sole governing factor of perceptive honour,” the bench explained.

Cosmo India spoke to Karuna Nundy, an Advocate at the Supreme Court of India, whose work focuses on constitutional law, commercial litigation and arbitration, media law and legal policy. She had the following views on the matter:

“When judges go rogue contrary to Supreme Court judgements and the most basic constitutional rights, then they reinforce the "might is right" dangers in society. This judgement is shocking in the bald and brief way in which it violates the right to life. That right to life has been articulated very specifically by the Supreme Court, in the Shakti Vahini judgement and also the Arumugam Servai judgement, where they had said that district courts (and this would, of course, apply to constitutional court as well) must actively protect a couple suffering the threat of an honour killing."

"The courts are meant to provide police protection and a safe house at a nominal rate, and in fact, the Arumugam judgement also says that government officials who will fail to do this will be penalised. I think judicial notice should be taken by the Chief Justice of the various courts of such judgements, and the individual judge must be sent for root and branch retraining to the national judicial academies. Their contemporaries in the police would've been strictly penalised for such an act. They are actively placing citizens in danger, as you've come forward, your name is now public, so your problem gets worse, and you have no protection. it’s important to keep in mind that the local superintendent of police still has the duty to protect this couple."