Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ordered that marriage between first cousins is unlawful. The court told that marriage in which the petitioner desires to marry a girl, who is his first cousin, was also considered illegal. “The proposal in the current plea that as and when she (the girl) reaches the age of 18 years, they will perform marriage is also considered illegal,” the judge said while attending the petition.
The statement came after a 21-year-old man went to the high court against the state of Punjab pursuing expectant bail in a suit recorded under Sections 363 (kidnapping), 366A (procuration of minor girl) of the IPC at the police station in Ludhiana district on August 18. The state counsel, while resisting the bail plea, pleaded that the girl was a minor and her parents had filed the FIR as she and the man were first cousins and their fathers were brothers.
The man’s counsel told Justice Arvind Singh Sangwan that the petitioner had also filed a criminal writ petition, along with the girl, for the safeguard of life and liberty. The court file of the criminal writ petition was called during the hearing and as per its memo of parties, the girl was stated to be 17 years of age and the petitioner man had filed the petition with the proposal that both of them were in a “live-in relationship”.
It was stated in the petition that the date of birth of the girl was August 2003 and on the date of filing the petition on September 3, 2020, she was the age 17 years and 14 days. Along with the petition, a representation was also added, in which the girl had stated that her parents adored their sons but ignored her, thus, she determined to live with her friend (petitioner) and on that statement, she was apprehending that her parents can torment them and trouble the peace of their mind.
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The court disposed of this petition on September 7. The state was referred to grant them security if any menace was scented to the man and the girl. However, the judge made it clear “that this order shall not be taken to protect the petitioners (man and the girl) from legal action for violation of the law, if any, committed by them”.The judge, after listening counsel for the parties in the present petition, said, “I find that in the present petition also, the petitioner has not revealed about the point that he is the first cousin of the girl and, hence, the request in the present petition that as and when she attains the age of 18 years, they will perform marriage is also illegal.”
While contending the anticipatory bail plea, the state counsel disputed: “that the girl was aged about 17 years and is a minor, accordingly, her parents have got the FIR reported as the youth and the girl are the first cousins as their fathers are actual brothers. Hence the petitioner has obscured the fact in the petition that they fall in the restricted ‘sapinda’ (which prohibits marriage between two individuals if they have a common ancestor) under the Hindu Marriage Act and cannot perform marriage with each other,” the state council asserted.
“Once the petitioner and the girl are refused from performing marriage with each other, there is no question of their being in any live-in-relationship, which is considered immoral and not acceptable in the society, it was claimed.
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