Source : Indiatoday.in
The Supreme Court on Tuesday asserted that adults have the right to choose their life partner while saying that it was high time "society learns to accept inter-caste and inter-faith marriages". The top court made the observations while hearing a case of an inter-caste marriage from Karnataka. The SC bench, comprising of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Hrishikesh Roy, also observed that it would "hardly be a desirable social exercise" for parents to shun their children only because they decided to marry outside their caste or community.The court also emphasised on counselling and training for police personnel on ways to handle cases of inter-caste marriage. The Karnataka couple approached the top court after a case was lodged by the woman's family. The parents of the woman had initially lodged a missing persons complaint after the couple eloped. Advocate Prabhat Kumar Rai, representing the couple, said the Belgavi police should not have lodged an FIR in such a case since there was no cognisable offence indicated in the missing persons complaint. The couple belong to different castes and different states, and work as lecturers in a university. They had met in 2018 and eloped in 2020 after the woman's parents did not approve of their relationship. After their marriage, the couple claimed they recieved threats from the woman's family as well as Belgavi police. Since the couple was living in Uttar Pradesh, they initially approached the Allahabad High Court for protection, but the case was listed for hearing after more than a month.