SC to hear woman's plea to live with her husband

The Supreme Court today agreed to hear on Monday the plea of a woman alleging that she was not allowed to be with her husband despite being a major and has been forced to live with parents.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said it would hear on May 7 the plea filed by 19-year-old Uttar Pradesh resident.

Sameer Abhyankar, the counsel for the woman, said her parents were forcing her to marry another person even though she was legally married to a man.

The Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court had on April 12 dismissed the habeas corpus petition of the man saying she was a minor as per the education certificate submitted by her parents and hence must stay with them.

In her plea, the woman said the high court had erred in placing "undue reliance" on the Child Welfare Committee Report, which "proceeded solely" on the basis of an education certificate produced by her parents "wrongly" showing her to be a minor.

"Because the high court ought to have placed reliance upon the thorough medical examination of the petitioner/detenue which revealed her actual age to be 19 years," the plea said.

The counsel for the woman pointed out that the apex court had recently decided a similar petition in which it had allowed another girl, who was found to be major after medical examination by the doctors of AIIMS, to go with her husband.

The petition also said the top court had set aside an Allahabad High Court order that had refused to allow the girl to stay with her husband, finding that she was a minor as per the CBSE certificate.

According to the plea, the woman got married on November 23 last year. It said that her parents had later filed a kidnapping case against her husband. The police filed a closure report after relying on her statement before a magistrate where she said she had gone with the man on her free will.

The petition alleged that she was forcibly taken away by her parents from the man's house. The high court had later dismissed his plea for her custody.