Cannot annul marriage between adults: SC

Cannot annul marriage between adults: SC)

Context:

• A Bench, led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, defined the limits of the court’s jurisdiction in the Hadiya case.

Introduction:

• Ms. Hadiya, a 26-year-old homoeopathy student, had converted to Islam and then married a Muslim.
• The Kerala High Court had annulled Ms. Hadiya’s marriage to Shafin Jahan
• Her father, Asokan K.M., alleged that she had been indoctrinated by a “well-oiled network,” involved in recruiting Indian citizens and trafficking them abroad to strife-prone countries like Syria to work as “sex slaves”.

Courts jurisdiction:

• Courts cannot annul marriages between two consenting adults or resort to a “roving enquiry” on whether the married relationship between a man and a woman is based on consent, the Supreme Court said on Thursday.
• Justice D.Y. Chandrachud countered that if there was trafficking of citizens involved, the govt. had the power to stop it on the basis of credible information. If citizens were travelling abroad to be part of a manifest illegality, then too, the government had the authority to stop them. “But in personal law, we cannot annul marriages because she did not marry the right person,”