None can interfere if an adult weds on own, converts: Calcutta HC

KOLKATA: There can be “no interference if an adult marries as per her choice, converts and refuses to return to her parents”, the Calcutta High Court said on Monday while hearing the plea of a Hindu father whose 19-year-old daughter had converted to marry a Muslim man.
The father, a 44-year-old farmer from Nadia’s Durgapur village, said his daughter had left home on September 15 and the next day he learnt that she had converted, taken a Muslim name, and married.He alleged that his daughter was either coerced into doing so or lured.
“After his daughter left home saying she was going to the bank and did not return, he lodged an FIR in Murutia police station alleging she had been kidnapped,” said lawyer Susmita Saha Dutta. In his petition, the father claimed he wouldn’t have doubted her intention had the marriage been formalised under the Special Marriage Act, 1954 that provides for inter-religious marriages. But she changed her religion and got married within 24 hours.
After police traced the woman, she stated before a judicial magistrate that she had converted on her own will and married. The father, however, moved the HC insisting that the statement under 164 CrPC, “may not have been recorded in an atmosphere where she felt comfortable”.
To allay his apprehensions, the HC had directed the girl, now 19, to meet the senior-most additional district judge in Tehatta. The court had also instructed that “sufficient care be taken so that she was not under any coercion or undue influence”. The district judge furnished a “clear and clean report” to the HC, but the father was still not satisfied.
A division bench of justices Sanjib Banerjee and Arijit Banerjee in their Monday order observed: “If an adult marries as per her choice and decides to convert and not return to her paternal house, there can be no interference in the matter.” But to allay the father’s apprehensions, the bench asked the girl to meet the HC’s additional public prosecutor in his chamber on Wednesday at 10:30 am without anyone – including her husband – and directed the APP to submit a report to it on Thursday, when it will again take up the matter.