Court gives police protection to bride in intercaste marriage

A city court has directed police to provide security to a girl, whose father was against her marriage to a boy from a different caste and had accused him of kidnapping and raping her.

An additional sessions judge acquitted the youth of charges of kidnapping and rape, which were filed on the father’s complaint after the couple got married in February.
After pronouncement of the judgement, the girl told the court that she fears for her life from her family members, who are against her relationship with north-west Delhi resident Vinod Kumar.

She said till her husband Vinod, who is in judicial custody, is released from jail, she may be sent to her sister-in-law’s house in the Capital. The court directed the station house officer of Shahbad Dairy police station to take the girl to her matrimonial house.

The girl’s father had filed a case against Vinod in February this year, alleging that he had kidnapped his minor daughter to compel her for marriage. He had also alleged that Vinod had repeatedly raped his daughter for 10 days by confining her in his hometown in UP.

After police brought the couple from Mau district in UP, Vinod was taken into custody and the girl was sent to her father. Later, a test revealed that the girl was not a minor. The court said since she was an adult, she was free to choose her life partner and asked her father not to interfere in her matrimonial life.

“But he (father) was agitated and was not ready to accept the marriage of the girl with the accused. He even questioned the court on how the girl could be permitted to go with the accused as he had not consented to her marriage with him,” the court said.
“This being the background, I feel that the apprehensions raised by the girl may not be unfounded,” it said.