Allahabad HC turns down protection for Muslim man in live-in relationship with Dalit Hindu woman, says petition filed to circumvent anti-conversion law

The Allahabad High Court on 29th July refused to grant protection from arrest to a Muslim man and a Hindu woman who claimed to have been living together in a live-in relationship. The interfaith couple had filed a writ petition in the Allahabad High Court seeking a direction for the quashing of an FIR filed against them and to prohibit the opposite parties from harassing and arresting them and their family members.

The FIR was filed by the Dalit woman’s father, who was opposed to his daughter’s relationship with Ikran Ahmad, invoking the provisions of the BNS and the SC/ST Act. The counsel appearing for the father apprised the court that the woman’s maternal grandmother was so disturbed due to societal pressure caused by the woman’s relationship with the Muslim man that she suffered a brain haemorrhage.

Petitioners alleged harassment by police

The petitioners stated before the court that they loved each other and had been living together. Though they did not inform the court about how long they had been living together, they claimed they intended to marry. They said that since they were both majors, they had the right to live with whoever they wanted. They alleged that the woman’s father and the police have been harassing them.

After hearing the arguments of both sides, a bench of Justices Sangeeta Chandra and Brij Raj Singh refused to interfere in the case and dismissed the petition on the ground that a cognizable offence was made out in the FIR. The court stated that even though both the petitioners are adults, they can’t use the courts to rubber-stamp a private relationship without legal backing.

The court noted that as per the provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, interfait couples must go through a legal process to live together. The bench said that the couple was trying to circumvent the law by using the litigation.

The High Court called out the petitioners for trying to outwit the court and said, “This writ petition appears to be a circuitous way to get the seal and signature of the High Court upon their conduct without any verification of their age and other necessary aspects required to be done by the appropriate authority. Therefore, we cannot allow the petitioners to raise disputed questions of fact under Writ jurisdiction as it would be a wrong assumption of such extraordinary jurisdiction,”

The High Court also referred to Islamic jurisprudence and the Quran and highlighted that premarital and extramarital sexual relations are forbidden under Islam and are punishable too. “The punishment for such offence according to Quran (chapter 24) is hundred lashes for the unmarried male and female who commit fornication together with the punishment prescribed by the ‘Sunnah’ for the married male and female that is stoning to death,” the bench said.

Live-in relationships being misused by interfaith couples to bypass the anti-conversion law: HC

After examining several relevant Supreme Court judgments, the High Court said that the decisions of the Apex Court must be read in the context of the specific facts presented before the court and do not amount to a blanket endorsement of live-in relationships, particularly when used to avoid statutory responsibilities. The judges also took note of the fact that the petitioners in the present case failed to meet the preliminary criteria of a live-in relationship, such as duration of cohabitation, shared finances, or societal acknowledgement.

The High Court highlighted that living together without marriage in the name of live-in relationships has become a way for interfaith couples to evade the implications of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021. “After the enactment of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, the device of living together without marriage has been adopted to escape from the clutches of the law,” the court the High Court noted in its judgment accessed by OpIndia.

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