Uttar Pradesh woman finds relief in Allahabad High Court after family opposes marriage
When 28-year-old Shubhangini Shukla chose to marry Pravi Gupta, 27, the man she loved, she already expected opposition from her family. What she perhaps did
When 28-year-old Shubhangini Shukla chose to marry Pravi Gupta, 27, the man she loved, she already expected opposition from her family. What she perhaps did not anticipate was that the fight for her life choice would end with the Allahabad High Court censuring her family and the Uttar Pradesh Police. On July 27, a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court, comprising Justices J.J. Munir and Tarun Saxena, quashed the FIR her father had lodged against her and her husband, ruling that the police had “no business” investigating the marriage of two consenting adults. The court also imposed costs on both the police and her father for pursuing the case despite clear evidence that the marriage was voluntary. A marriage, then a complaint Shukla holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics, and has also completed a B.T.C./D.El.Ed. teaching qualification. She met her husband in college, and after nearly two years of dating, the two decided to spend their lives together. He is a newly appointed assistant teacher at a primary school in Madhya Pradesh. The couple married according to Hindu Vedic rituals on February 18, 2026, at the Arya Vedic Sabha in Prayagraj. A marriage certificate from the ceremony, along with photographs, was placed on record before the High Court.
Speaking to The Hindu, Ms. Shukla said the trouble began nearly two months later. On April 17, 2026, she informed her father, Prakash Narayan Shukla, about the marriage. The news, she said, “annoyed him much enough” that he, along with other relatives, allegedly assaulted her and threatened to kill both her and her husband. She left her parental home the same day and sent a written application by registered post to Bhadohi Superintendent of Police Abhinav Tyagi and the then Station House Officer of Suriyavan police station, Manish Dwivedi, seeking protection for herself and her husband. “I had already anticipated that my family would not accept my marriage easily because it was not just an inter-caste marriage, but also because the boy was younger than me. But that they would beat and threaten to kill me was something I had never imagined,” she said. Despite the woman informing the police of her marriage and submitting documents to establish that she had married of her own free will, an FIR was registered against her husband on April 19, 2026, based on a complaint by her father. He was booked under Section 87 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which deals with kidnapping, abducting or inducing a woman to compel her marriage.
The BriefWire