Protect, Don’t Lecture

Himachal HC should have responded differently to a habeas corpus case

A man seeks Himachal HC’s help, for a woman whose life he believes to be under threat, going by her text messages to him.

Himachal HC division bench, instead of stepping up, and maybe hearing the woman also, packs the petitioner off with a morality lecture. Only because the petitioner was the married woman’s live-in. And the petitioner feared her husband and mother-in-law detained her forcibly.

The two judges were least mindful that SC decriminalised ‘adultery’ (extramarital sexual relationships), in 2018. They ignored a married woman’s perceived threat to life. The bench only saw a man in an “affair” with a married woman. HC refused to ‘enter’ a married couple’s ‘life’ – “It is not for this court to intervene in matrimonial issues inter se the woman and her husband.”

It cannot be denied that the bench brought into their court a misplaced morality bias. It dismissed a habeas corpus – a very specific legal instrument to protect individuals from unlawful or arbitrary detention. This, when SC, in 2024, put out guidelines/safeguards for HCs to deal with ‘detention’ by those with family authority, following a case where a petitioner alleged that an LGBTQ+ person was being held by family, against their wish. In this case, HC glanced by that case. Instead, it said, “Judicial sanctity-cannot be given to adulterous relations.”

Surely, a petitioner’s relationship should not have so much bearing where threat to life is alleged? There is nothing that would stop HC from penalising the petitioner, if the case were found to be frivolous.
Why not, instead, put out a query about the woman’s status? CJIs have repeated often that judges should desist from colouring verdicts with personal views, even in obiter dicta. But the judges barely looked beyond the fact of the woman’s relationship outside of her marriage. To that end, they only upheld traditional retrograde views, not so much the right to life or dignity.

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