NEW DELHI: An influential Karnataka politician’s daughter ran away from her parent’s home in Gulbarga to Delhi after being tortured into marrying a man instead of her lover, moved the Supreme Court on Wednesday and got Delhi Police protection within hours.

At 10.30 am on Wednesday, counsel Sunil Fernandes sought urgent hearing of her petition and a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud agreed to hear it at 2 pm.

Senior advocate Indira Jaising said the 26-year-old woman was physically and mentally tortured by her parents and her brother, who even threatened to rape her if she went ahead to marry her lover instead of the groom chosen by the family. She was forcibly married off on March 14 despite her complaint to the police, she said. Jaising showed the text message sent by the woman to the police and to the groom, clearly conveying that she was not interested in marrying him.

Jaising said it was a reverse of the Hadiya case, referring to the recent SC judgment protecting a girl’s choice to marry a Muslim man despite efforts to terminate the alliance by her Hindu parents.

“In this case, she does not want to live with the man the parents have chosen and forced her through physical abuse to undergo the marriage rituals. This is a void marriage as she had not consented to the marriage,” Jaising said

She said in the Hindu Marriage Act, there was no specific reference to valid consent from a woman to marriage and the SC must declare that any marriage performed under the Hindu law or customs must have a valid consent from the woman. “Moreover, there are so many rituals in a Hindu marriage, which will require codification and consent of the girl read into it to make them essential part of a marriage,” she said.

But the CJI-led bench said this petition at best was in the nature of habeas corpus for protection of the 26-year-old electronics and communication engineer who did not intend to go to her matrimonial or parental home.

“We are not getting into deciding the constitutional validity of provisions of Hindu Marriage Act as it is not germane to the subject matter in the petition. We are also not concerned with codification of Hindu marriage rituals as that is in the domain of Parliament. On our part, we will always protect any woman from being forced to go anywhere against her will. If the petitioner wants to annul the marriage, she can approach a civil court and seek a divorce decree. Otherwise, no one can force her to go either to her parental or matrimonial home,” CJI Misra said.

The bench asked additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta to convey to Delhi Police to protect her and sought responses from the girl’s parents, brother and husband by May 4.

The court will hear further arguments, confined only to her protection, on May 4.

