The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has observed that an adult woman has the legal right to choose whom she wants to live with.
With this observation, the court set at liberty a major woman, who said she was illegally detained by her father after marrying a man of a different religion.
The court directed that she be set at liberty from her father’s custody, after she categorically stated that she wanted to live with her husband. The petitioner allegedly sent messages to her husband complaining that her family members were assaulting and harassing her and asking him to rescue her. After his approach to the police did not succeed, the habeas corpus petition was filed. The high court, however, held that those judgments arose from materially different factual circumstances. In those cases, the alleged wives themselves had disputed the validity of their marriages and had resisted the husbands’ claims to join their company. Accordingly, the court allowed the habeas corpus petition and directed that the petitioner be set at liberty from the custody of her father.
The petitioner categorically stated before the court that she wanted to live with her husband and that her father was not permitting her to join him.
The court noted that her husband follows the Sikh religion, while the petitioner is Hindu, and her family members were opposed to their relationship. The petition stated that the petitioner’s family subsequently called her to her paternal home to tie ‘rakhi’ to her brothers, but she was thereafter detained by her father and other family members. The couple claimed to have married in a temple in Noida on November 4, 2025, and had since been living as husband and wife.
