Punjab and Haryana High Court quotes Shakespeare on love, bats for quashing FIRs involving runaway couples

The Punjab and Haryana High Court recently said that courts should exercise flexibility in considering petitions for quashing of kidnapping cases involving runaway couples..Justice Sumeet Goel also said that the fact of the victim being a minor at the time of alleged crime should not lead to rejection of the quashing plea on this ground.Even in such cases, the High Court is well within its jurisdiction to evaluate the entirety of facts including the fact of the victim having attained the age of majority and still staying in the matrimony, it added.“Where the impugned FIR pertains to allegation of offences under Sections 363-A/366 of IPC & it emerges that the accused and the victim have married each other and are living happily, the High Court ought to consider, with a high degree of latitude, such plea for quashing such an FIR … Such plea would be fortified in case child has been born from the wedlock,” the judge said.In this context, the Court reproduced a quote from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.”.It would not serve the interest of justice if the High Court were to decline to exercise its power to quash such proceedings, the Court opined.However, it clarified that the course of action would depend on the entirety of facts and circumstances of each case. .The Court was hearing a petition moved by a man who was booked in 2009 for allegedly enticing away a girl for marriage. The accused was arrested seven years later and subsequently granted bail.He urged the High Court to quash the First Information Report (FIR), stating that he and the alleged victim were in love and have been living as husband and wife since 2010. The Court was also told that the couple have three children..Justice Goel considered whether the FIR registered at the instance of the father or guardian of victim ought to be quashed when it is found that the accused and victim have married each other.“More often than not, this Court is faced with an incessant ream of petitions wherein the father/guardian has got registered an FIR by stating that his daughter has been enticed away by the accused,” the Court observed.It further noted that the accused and the alleged victim were earlier in a relationship and married after running away because their marriage was not acceptable to the family.“For parents to tether their affinity towards a daughter only through (injured) honour, psychogenic pain of separation or sheer dominance of Will is neither altruistic nor a kindred affinity, both of which are necessary foundation to a family,” the Court said..It emphasised that parents must come to terms with the fact that their children may make individual choices and that certain consequential life events cannot be reversed..The Court added that for a couple, who have been married happily for long and have children, it can be embarrassing, unsettling and even disconcerting to be subjected to “unabated withering” over their matrimony.In this context, it referred to a line from Shakespeare’s play Henry VI,“A marriage is a matter of more worth, than to be dealt in by attorneyship”..A father’s rancour cannot be permitted to remain “extant ad infinitum ad nauseam” and it would be patently ludicrous to question and scrutinise the accused, who is husband of the alleged victim, the Court said.While considering the facts of the present case, the Court found it fit to exercise its inherent jurisdiction to quash the FIR. .Advocates GBS Gill and Shilesh Gupta represented the accused.Advocate Adhiraj Singh Thind represented the State of Punjab.Advocate Tejinder Pal Singh represented a respondent.