JOIN USBihar court asks 16-year-old boy's parents to take care of his minor 'wife'
In an exceptional case of showing leniency towards a minor accused, who was charged with kidnapping a minor girl, a local court in Bihar absolved the 16-year-old boy of all the charges and asked his parents to treat the minor girl as their ‘daughter-in-law’. Incidentally, the minor couple has an eight-month-old infant as a result of the two teenagers staying together as a couple.
“Treat the infant as your legitimate granddaughter and fulfil all the needs,” the judge told the boy’s parents in one of the rarest case where the court observed that “the order is an exception and should not be used to take advantage by anyone.”
According to the Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) Rajesh Pathak, the minor girl’s parents lodged an FIR against the minor boy in February 2019 at Hilsa (in Nalanda) alleging that he had kidnapped their daughter.
However, in July 2020, the girl appeared before the court and said she had run away with the boy to Delhi on her own and had been staying there as a couple. She also informed the court that she had an infant born out of this relationship.
In the meantime, the juvenile accused, who was 14-year-old during the lodging of the FIR (in 2019), appeared before the court last month and surrendered (at the age of 16).
“The act of the minor boy was punishable in law. But he has been acquitted in the larger interest of the lives of three minors – the boy himself, the girl and their eight-month-old daughter....The order is an exception and should not be used to take advantage by anyone,” observed the Principal Judge of the Nalanda Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), Manvendra Mishra.
After the judge asked the boy’s parents to treat the minor girl (who is one-and-a-half-year older to the 16-year-old boy) as their daughter-in-law and the infant as their grandchild, the girl’s parents too decided not to pursue the case further.