The Allahabad High Court recently criticized the Uttar Pradesh Police for investigating the marriages of young couples at the behest of their unsupportive family members.

A Division Bench of Justice JJ Munir and Justice Tarun Saxena said such cases were unnecessarily burdening the Courts and asked the police to instead focus on investigating actual crimes.

"We find a disturbing trend these days where the Police, as in the present case, are registering FIRs and chasing couples virtually investigating marriages, instead of investigating crimes with which their hands are full. They are wasting their time in business which is not their's. On account of these indiscretions by the Police, our dockets also swell with cases that are really not causes worth coming to Court, but become so on account of the Police taking actions at the stage of registration of the FIR and post that event which they ought not have done at all."

The Court stressed that a message should go out now to every citizen in the country that the age of majority of a person, who wishes to marry someone of their choice, has to be respected

"The Constitution does not permit an adult, whatever be the relationship, to dominate or rule over the will of another adult, who is a major under the law," the Bench said in the order passed on April 21.

The Court added that police were doing great disservice by registering such FIRs and chasing the young couples, sometime with ulterior motive to forcibly separate them and send back the bride to the parents or her family.

These actions are absolutely illegal and some of them are offences, the Court made it clear.

It, therefore, directed the Director General of Police (DGP) to take remedial actions in this regard before the Court is compelled to step in.

The Court was dealing with a petition moved by couple for quashing of a kidnapping case registered on the complaint moved by the woman's father.

The complainant alleged that his daughter, aged about 19 years, had eloped with a man and his brother in a car.

The Court said that possibly the only report that the complainant could have made in a case like this was to file a missing report to trace out the whereabouts of his missing daughter.

There was no occasion to register a crime, it added.

"Nevertheless, the impugned FIR, that is a cognizable case, has been registered and the Police are chasing the couple," the Bench said.

Finding that the couple had performed a marriage in December 2025 at the Shiv Mandir Dehradun in Uttarakhand and since then they are living peacefully, the Court ruled that the FIR was "a serious inroad" into their personal liberty.

"No one has business to tell a major, where he or she will stay, or with whom he or she will live, marry or spend his or her life," the Court said as it quashed the FIR.

It also issued a direction to the complainant not to enter the matrimonial home of the couple or disturb their peaceful matrimonial life in any manner whatsoever.

Advocates Ashish Kumar and Shivam Kumar Shukla represented the petitioners.

[Read Order]