AgenciesIt’s not quite The Graduate, and it’s certainly not ‘love jihad’. But this case bears marks of both. The Allahabad High Court weighed in on the case of 16-and-a-half-years-old Manish Kumar cohabiting with 18-year-old . The supposed ‘marriage’ of the two was illegal, since the ‘husband’ was a minor and, therefore, doesn’t qualify for the Big M. But what about cohabitation as partners? Uh-uh, says the law. If a minor girl can’t ‘live together’ with a major boy (at least 18), then neither can a minor boy cohabit with a major girl. Both would break the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012.
But there’s a twist to this tale of lawed-in love. Enter: Jyoti’s ‘mother-in-law’. She wants custody of her son, but he wants to stay with the ‘other woman’. True, 16-and-a-half and 18 are tricky ages. We aren’t sure how old Laila-Majnu and Heer-Ranjha were — and Romeo-Juliet would be barely out of their tweens. But the law doth not know the language of hormones, or love. Playing Solomon, the court decided that Manish will stay at a child care institution till he turns 18. For a country that calls its youngsters ‘children’ when they are well into their 20s, the tale of Manish and Jyoti will remain immortal — at least until February 4, 2022, when the Mannish Boy turns into a full-fledged legally attested man.