A DIVISION bench of the Gujarat High Court has come to the rescue of an interfaith couple from Banaskantha who had married allegedly towards the desires of the lady’s father and have been despatched to police custody for greater than per week.
The courtroom Tuesday ordered they be instantly produced earlier than the HC bench and launched from police custody.
The division bench, led by Justice Sonia Gokani, recorded the general public prosecutor’s assurance that the couple, who now wish to reside in Surat, shall be granted police safety “initially for a period of four weeks” by the Surat metropolis police commissioner, whereafter the police commissioner shall resolve whether or not the identical requires to be continued or not.
The couple had obtained married on December 30 at a temple in Rajasthan’s Abu Road and subsequently travelled to Kerala for his or her honeymoon. In the primary week of January, the Gujarat Police travelled to Kerala and introduced them again to Palanpur. The two have been separated and despatched to totally different police stations
— Palanpur East and Palanpur West. They have been formally arrested on January 15 after an FIR was FIR on the idea of a criticism submitted by the lady’s father at Palanpur East police station.
The lady is employed as a piece officer on contract with the taluka panchayat workplace in Palanpur. In his criticism, her father alleged that she stole Rs 82,000 from the household’s residence earlier than operating away, getting married fraudulently and acquiring a faux marriage certificates.
On January 18, a habeas corpus petition was moved by the brother of the 30-year-old man, who’s a street transport officer in RTO Surat, stating that the latter was illegally detained, arrested and remanded to police custody, following his current marriage to his 29-year-old childhood buddy from one other group.
Hearing the petition Tuesday, the division bench quashed and put aside the four-day remand order, dated January 18 to 22. The courtroom directed the Range IG of the jurisdiction involved “to inquire into the matter, more particularly, considering the conduct of respondent Nos. 5 and 6 (police inspectors of Palanpur East and West police stations), in whose custody, the couple has been detained for all these days, and report to the DIG”.
The courtroom expressed its dissatisfaction with the overreach the place the police exercised “undue fervour”, with the officers travelling to Kerala to take a consensually married couple into custody.
The order additional notes in its path to the Range IG: “While conducting such inquiry, the Range IG concerned shall bear in mind that this is the case where undue fervour is shown on account of this being an inter-religion marriage, so also the golden words of the Supreme Court in such matters…”
According to lawyer NK Majumdar, representing the petitioner, the daddy of the lady was against the wedding. The FIR additionally names the registrar as an accused, he stated.
“Gujarat Police went by flight to Kerala to take the couple into their custody and then travelled back by road to Palanpur where the husband-wife were kept at two separate police stations. Both were named as accused in the FIR. The woman was pressured to not continue with the relationship but she remained adamant. A contention was raised by the petitioner that how could his brother be taken into custody even before the FIR was registered. As per the prosecution’s case, they were taken into custody in Kerala on January 12 and brought to Palanpur and arrested on January 15. But as per the petitioner, they were brought to Palanpur on January 12 and continued to be in illegal detention until January 15, when the FIR came to be registered,” Majumdar stated.
On January 4, the lady had additionally written to the police authorities that she was married and had left residence of her personal volition. “Hearing the habeas corpus petition, the court directed that the two be produced (before it). The bench spoke to both of them in confidentiality, first separately to each of the two parties, and then together,” Majmudar stated.