Giving protection to minors in live-in against laws to prevent exploitation: JC

Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana high court has held that providing protection to a minor runaway couple in a live-in relationship would go against laws meant to protect young people from exploitation, harm, and moral danger.
The court was of the view that any judicial imprimatur which indirectly sanctions a minor's involvement in such a relationship would not only be antithetical to the legislative intent, but would undermine the very bulwark erected to preserve the sanctity of youthful innocence.
In its detailed order, Justice Sumeet Goel held that the law, in its sagacity, has circumscribed the liberties of minors, recognising their tender age and the consequential susceptibility to undue influence and imprudent choices. "By legislative fiat, provisions exist to interdict any form of abuse or impropriety that might arise from unfettered discretion of those yet to attain the full faculties of maturity," observed the judge in the order released on Wednesday.
Justice Goel passed these orders while hearing a plea filed by a couple seeking directions to protect their life and liberty from the girl's family. The court was informed that the petitioners, residents of Taran Tarn in Punjab, had known each other for long and had been in a live-in relationship at the moment. Earlier, both petitioners were engaged with each other with the consent of their respective families, but the girl's family broke the engagement as her father intended to get her married to a man older than her, who offered to take her abroad after marriage. The petitioners' counsel submitted that the couple had faced the wrath of their families on account of their live-in relationship and their life and liberty were at threat from them.
After hearing the petitioners, the HC dismissed the plea, observing that its protective jurisdiction must tread with measured caution, ensuring that its decree does not, even by implication, countenance that which the law expressly deprecates. In this case, the girl was a minor aged around 17 years and six months. The SSP, Taran Tarn, has been asked to take action as per the law.
BOX
"To extend the mantle of protection in such circumstances would, in effect, constitute an implicit approbation of a live-in arrangement involving minors, a proposition repugnant to the established statutory framework designed to shield the young and impressionable from exploitation and moral peril,"
- Justice Sumeet Goel | Punjab and Haryana high court