Punjab Live-In Couple — Boy 18, Girl 20 — Sought Protection. Judge Said: Don’t Bring Bad Name to Family
Punjab Live-In Couple: A Patiala district live-in couple sought HC protection from family threats. Instead, the judge lectured them on “bringing bad name” to the family, and dismissed their plea.
North Desk Bureau
Chandigarh, June 16
A young couple from a small town in Patiala district went to the Punjab and Haryana High Court asking for protection from their own families. What they got instead was a lecture — and a dismissed petition.
The boy has just turned 18. And the girl is 20. They told the court they had known each other for years, were now living together, and had decided to marry.
They claimed the girl’s family found out, opposed the relationship, and began pressuring her to give it up. At one point, she alleges, they tried to force her into a “roka” ceremony with another man against her wishes.
Fearing for her safety, she left her parental home on May 1 and moved in with the boy elsewhere in the district. The couple says the threats continued even after that, and that they had written to the Senior Superintendent of Police, Patiala, seeking protection — without any response — before turning to the High Court.
Justice Sandeep Moudgil wasn’t moved.
The sermon
Punjab Live-In Couple: Instead of police protection, the couple got a lecture on Indian values. “India is a country with a diverse set of principles, traditions, rituals, and beliefs that serve as essential legal sources,” the judge wrote, before observing that “as time has passed, the society started to adopt Western culture, which is vastly different from Indian culture,” and that “a portion of India appears to have adopted Modern lifestyle, namely, the live-in relationship.”
It got more pointed from there. While acknowledging that Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees every individual the right to live with dignity, the judge turned that right back on the couple — specifically, on the girl’s parents. Running away from the parental home, he held, “is not only bringing bad name to the family but also is violating the right of the parents to live with dignity and honour.”
The order leaned on a Supreme Court ruling which says a couple must be “of legal age to marry” to claim the legal status of a live-in relationship.
The bench also made clear it wasn’t alone in this view: “the same view of this Court has been reiterated by various other Benches,” the order noted, in cases where granting protection to live-in couples was seen as a risk to “the entire social fabric of the society.”
The plea was dismissed earlier this month, with the judge holding that police protection here “may indirectly give… assent to such illicit relationship,” and that personal liberty under Article 21 “has to be within the ambit of law.”
What they’re left with
Punjab Live-In Couple: On paper, not much. The girl currently has no income of her own, though the petition says she intends to start working. The boy claims to earn around Rs 25,000 a month at a private job. Neither owns any property — but they say they have “enough sources” to manage their living expenses regardless.
The detail the order doesn’t spell out
Punjab Live-In Couple: There’s a legal wrinkle in the case file that the order gestures at without ever explaining outright: the boy turned 18 only last December while India’s marriageable age remains 21 for men and 18 for women under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act. So even setting aside the judge’s views on tradition and family honour, the couple’s marriage plan is, for now, not one the law will recognise.
A legally adult boyfriend who can’t yet become a legal husband is arguably the more concrete reason the bench wasn’t willing to treat this as an established live-in relationship rather than a runaway romance — sermon or no sermon.
READ: Haryana Police Brutality: Dalit Advocate Stripped, Cops Held Gun To His Head; HC Monitors Case
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