New Delhi: Three months after the Punjab and Haryana high court granted protection to a live-in couple, observing that they deserve rights equal to that of married people, the Rajasthan high court called a man and a woman’s live-in relationship “illicit”.
Indian Express has reported that a single-judge bench of Justice Satish Kumar Sharma denied a live-in couple police protection which they had requested in their petition.
The couple, a 30-year-old woman and a 27-year-old man, live in Rajasthan’s Jhunjhunu district. The petition mentions that the woman, while legally married, was forced to live apart from her husband because of the latter’s physical abuse of her.
The petitioners’ counsel noted at the hearing that the couple were constantly receiving threats due to their relationship.
However, the order – written in Hindi – took off largely from what the counsel for the respondents (the woman’s husband and his family) argued, calling the relationship between the petitioning couple “illicit, anti-social and also against the law”.
The judge wrote that since the woman is married and has not obtained a divorce, the live-in relationship “comes under the category of an illicit relationship.”
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The counsel for the respondents — the woman’s husband and his family — had said during the hearing that the relationship between the two petitioners “is illicit, anti-social and also against the law” and had argued that they were “not entitled to get protection”.
The Express report also notes that the order “rejected the request for police protection, adding that granting police protection to the petitioners would “amount to indirectly giving permission/acceptance to such illicit relationships”.”
The order asks the petitioners to lodge a complaint with a police station if a crime is committed on them.
The judge cited a similar order by the Allahabad high court in Uttar Pradesh, which had denied a live-in couple protection. A day later – while giving protection to another live-in couple – the Allahabad high court had noted that it was “not against the live-in relation” but could not offer protection to the previous live-in couple because one of them was married at the time. However, it is not clear if the married woman in the Allahabad high court’s first case was escaping abuse as the Rajasthan woman was.
In June 2021, a Supreme Court bench of Justice Navin Sinha and Justice Ajay Rastogi had ordered Punjab Police to grant protection to a live-in couple whose plea was earlier dismissed by the Punjab and Haryana high court.
In May, a different bench of the same Punjab and Haryana high court granted protection to another live-in couple – after two other benches of the same high court had frowned upon the concept.
The Supreme Court in a 2018 judgement had ruled it wanted to protect married and live-in couples from any threat of violence.