The court affirms that the right to life and liberty under Article 21 protects individuals' choices in relationships, mandating state protection against familial threats regardless of marital status.

Order :

SUNIL BENIWAL (VACATION JUDGE), J.

1. Petitioner herein, inter alia, is for issuance of a writ in the nature of mandamus directing the respondents to protect the life and liberty of petitioners as they apprehend threat at the hands of private respondents Nos.4 to 13.

2. Learned counsel for the petitioners submits that petitioners want to marry each other. However, parents/relatives of petitioner No.1, i.e. respondents Nos.4 to 13 forcibly want to marry her with some other boy.

3. On advance service of copy of the petition, learned Public Prosecutor appears and accepts notice on behalf of State of Rajasthan.

4. Given the nature of order being passed, there is no necessity to seek any return by the official respondents or even to serve the private respondents Nos.4 to 13.

5. Facts, as pleaded in the petition, succinctly are that petitioner No.1 born on 09.02.2007 and petitioner No.2, born on 03.09.2006, are purportedly in love with each other. They have been living together in relationship for past couple of days.

6. Petitioners have decided to get married when petitioner No.2 attains the marriageable age but parents of petitioner No.1 are against their marriage. Ever since they started staying together in a live-in relationship, private respondents Nos.4 to 13 have been threatening them with dire consequences. Apprehension is that parents may even will kill both petitioners by tracing them from wherever they are.

7. In the circumstances, the petitioners approached the police authorities with detailed representation with necessary documents to safeguard their life and liberty, but no action is being taken on same. Hence, the instant petition.

8. The petitioners state that they are living in constant danger of their life, as they have every apprehension that private respondents will catch them and carry out their threats and may go to the extent of even committing their murder. The petitioners are, therefore, running here and there and unable to find any safe place to live in the absence of protection of their life and liberty. Hence the present writ petition seeking appropriate directions to the official respondents to provide protection qua their life and liberty.

9. Controversy that needs adjudication now thus is whether an appropriate writ/direction or order is warranted to allay the apprehension of the petitioners for granting protection to them for enforcement of their fundamental rights under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. The issue in hand, however, is not marriage of the petitioners, but the deprivation of fundamental right of seeking protection of life and liberty. I have no hesitation to hold that Constitutional Fundamental Right under Article 21 of Constitution of India stands on a much higher pedestal. Being sacrosanct under the Constitutional Scheme it must be protected, regardless of the solemnization of an invalid or void marriage or even the absence of any marriage between the parties.

10. It is the bounden duty of the State, as per the Constitutional obligations casted upon it, to protect the life and liberty of every citizen. Right to human life is to be treated on much higher pedestal, regardless of a citizen being minor or major. Mere fact that petitioners are not of marriageable age in the present case would not deprive them of their fundamental right, as envisaged in Constitution of India, being citizens of India.

11. Reference may be had, in the aforesaid context, to a judgment rendered by Punjab & Haryana High Court in CRWP No. 4725 of 2021 titled “Seema Kaur and another v. State of Punjab and others” , wherein, speaking for court, Sant Parkash, J., opined as under :

“This Court in the past and also recently has allowed protection to those runaway couples, even though they were not married and were in a live-in relationship, and in cases where the marriage was invalid (as one of the parties though a major, was not of age as per Section 5 of the HINDU MARRIAGE ACT ). Reference in this regard can be ma