The fundamental right to protection of life and liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution of India must be upheld, regardless of the marital status or age of the individuals, and the State has a duty to ensure the protection and personal liberty of individuals who have chosen to reside together without the sanctity of marriage.

ARUN MONGA, J.

Petition 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 No.4 to 11.

2. Learned counsel for the petitioners submits that petitioners want to marry each other. However, parents/relatives of petitioner No.1 i.e. respondents No.4 to 11 forcibly want to marry her with a boy in other community.

3. Notice of motion.

4. On advance service of copy of the petition, learned State counsel appears and accepts notice on behalf of the respondent-State of Punjab.

5. 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 No.4 to 11.

6. Facts, as pleaded in the petition, succinctly are that petitioner No.1 born on 31.08.2002 and petitioner No.2, born on 12.04.2005 (a major boy but of non-marriageable age of 18 years and 05 months), are purportedly in love with each other. They have been living together in relationship for past couple of days.

7. Petitioners have decided to get married when petitioner No.2 attained the marriageable age and approached their parents, but parents of petitioner No.1 were against their marriage. Ever since they started staying together in a live-in relationship, private respondents No.4 to 11 have been threatening them with dire consequences. Apprehension is that parents may even will kill both petitioners by tracing them from wherever they are.

8. In the circumstances, the petitioners approached respondent No.2 (Senior Superintendent of Police, (Rural) Amritsar) and submitted a representation dated 06.08.2023 (Annexure P-3) seeking to safeguard their life and liberty, but no action is being taken on the same. Hence, the instant petition.

9. The petitioners state that they are living in constant danger 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.

10. Controversy that needs adjudication now thus is whether an appropriate writ/direction or order is warranted to allay the apprehensions 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.

11. 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 a 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.

12. Reference may be had, in the aforesaid context, to a judgment rendered in CRWP No. 4725 of 2021 titled “Seema Kaur and another v. State of Punjab and others”, wherein, speaking for this court, Sant Parkash, J. (as he then was in this Court), 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 livein relationship, and in cases where