'Disturbing Trend': Allahabad HC Slams UP Cops For Investigating Marriages, Chasing Young Couples; Seeks DGP's Action

The Allahabad High Court recently observed that the Police are doing a great disservice by registering FIRs and chasing young couples who have married of their own free will.

Flagging the 'disturbing trend' of the Police registering FIRs and investigating consensual marriages instead of probing other crimes, a bench of Justice JJ Munir and Justice Tarun Saxena directed the Director General of Police, Uttar Pradesh, to take remedial action in such cases.

With this direction, the bench quashed an FIR lodged against the couple-petitioners, stressing that no one has the right to tell a major where he or she will stay or with whom he or she will live, marry, or spend his or her life.

The Court added that a message should go out now to every citizen in the country that the age of majority has to be respected, and so also the constitutional culture.

Briefly put, a young adult couple had moved the HC, challenging an FIR lodged by the girl's father against the boy under Section 87 BNS. The girl had married the boy out of her own free will.

However, upon receiving her father's missing person report, the police lodged the instant FIR and began pursuing the couple.

Taking note of the facts of the case, as well as the marriage certificate issued by the Uttarakhand Government and filed with the petition, the bench remarked that for a missing complaint, the police should not have lodged the FIR.

After interacting with the girl, who indicated that she wished to stay with her husband, the bench termed the FIR a "serious inroad into personal liberty of both the petitioners".

In a stern message to the father, as well as to the general public, the Court stressed that the Constitution does not permit an adult, whatever the relationship, to dominate or rule over the will of another adult who is a major under the law.

Taking exception to the role of the police in similar cases, the bench strongly remarked thus:

"Of course, the case of a child, who is not a major, is different. The Police are doing great dis-service by registering FIRs such as these, and more than that, chasing the young couple, sometime with ulterior motive to forcibly separate them and send back the bride to the parents or her family. These actions are absolutely illegal and some of them are offences"

Thus, while directing the DGP to take remedial action in such cases and quashing the FIR, the bench issued a mandamus to the respondents, including the girl's father, not to enter the matrimonial home of the petitioners or disturb their peaceful matrimonial life in any manner whatsoever.

The petition was, thus, allowed.

Case citation: 2026 LiveLaw (AB) 249