The Supreme Court on Friday (February 12) held that the consent of the family or community or clan was not necessary when two adults agree to marry each other. A division bench of Justice Sanjay Kaul and Justice Hrishikesh Roy said that an adult's right to marry a person of their choice should not be affected by the concepts of "class honour" or "group thinking".
The bench gave its order while judging on a case where a woman's father lodged a missing person complaint as she had married a man without informing him. Even after knowing about her whereabouts and marriage, the investigating officer insisted that the girl should appear before the Murgod police station to record the statement so that the case could be closed.
To this end, the couple approached the Supreme Court, alleging that the IO was asking the woman to come back to Karnataka or else they would come to her and file a kidnapping case against her husband.
"The way forward to the police authorities is to not only counsel the current IOs but device a training programme to deal with such cases for the benefit of the police personnel," the bench said.
The court said that some guidelines and training programmes needed to be set up to take care of such socially sensitive cases.
In its judgement, the court noted that the educated adults were choosing their spouses which can be different from the previous norms of society where caste and community played a major role.
"Possibly, this is the way forward where caste and community tensions will reduce by such intermarriage but in the meantime, these youngsters face threats from the elders and the courts have been coming to the aid of these youngsters," the SC bench added.
While disposing of the petition, the bench also quoted Dr BR Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste, saying, "I am convinced that the real remedy is inter-marriage. Fusion of blood can alone create the feeling of being kith and kin, and unless this feeling of kinship, of being kindred, becomes paramount, the separatist feeling—the feeling of being aliens—created by caste will not vanish."
