Introduction:
Recently Madras High Court stated to verify certain mechanisms on the fact that women who marry a person who is convicted in jail, give her free consent or will to marry that person.
The court was of the view that when a woman marries a convict, she has to go through a mental agony which is very hard for women to bear with as they have to live the life with loneliness. Hence, it is necessary to find out the mechanisms through which it can be found whether the women gave her consent for marrying a convict or not.
The case in which the court stated this is:
In Shamma v. The State and Ors.
Marriage, it is the most important part of life. India, a country which has a diverse culture, customs and traditions where each and every community has its own laws and principles for governing the purpose of marriage.
Marriage is the phase where women want constant support and love from their spouse. Now marriage requires the consent of both the parties, women as well as men. The consent should be free without any coercion. The woman as well as men not to be forced to marry any person because then that would be constituted as a forced marriage. Marriage is a contract between the two parties and spouses want love, support, communication, care, affection, understanding from each other. But these things are different from the case where women marry a convict, whose whole life is a path to loneliness and no constant support, love or care.
From earlier times, Men are the breadwinner of the family, they are required to ear from their livelihood and feed their family. They are the head of the family. But this is not the scene with the convicts, the person who is in jail or has been imprisoned has to go through a mental agony which is hard to deal with, not only a person who is convicted has to suffer but their wife, children as well as the entire family has to go through mental agony.
It can have different psychological and physiological affects on them.
Recently, the Madras High Court stated that whether the woman who marries a convict gives her free consent to marry?
Now a person who is a convict comes out on parole and get married and leaves behind her wife to live alone in the Matrimonial House, this leaves a mental agony on the mind of the wife.
A person who knows that he or she will not get any constant support, care, love, affection, nature of understanding from the other spouse because he is convicted in jail for a crime and is out on parole and has to return back to his or her punishment, how can they give consent to marry that person even after knowing all this.
To know whether the given consent is free from any coercion or compulsion, the Madras Court took the help of NCW i.e. National Commission for Women, to study whether the consent given by women is free or not and to install a mechanism to verify this fact.
In this case, a Plea of Habeas Corpus was applied in the court by the petitioner Shamma.
Habeas Corpus means you may have the body/person. It can be filed by any person where a person is detained.
The petitioner applied a plea seeking 30 days ordinary leave for her spouse, Aslam who is convicted for life in the Coimbatore Central Prison. The Judges stated that Aslam married Shamma 10 years ago when he was out on parole, and it has been 20 years since he is in conviction. After marriage, he left the wife with his mother.
Now the Court wants NCW to know whether the consent was free or not.
In 2014, it was found that 150 convicts from Tihar Jail got married when they were out on parole. One of the convicts, named Rakesh Singh who was of 34 years old got married when he was out on parole, he was to serve lifetime imprisonment. He asked permission from Government in writing that he wants a four-day prole as he wants to tie a knot to a person he has known for long.
Senior Officer of Tihar Jail stated that not only Rakesh, but there are many more convicts who came out on parole under various grounds to tie knots. He also added that they did not have any complaint as it is something positive for the convicts as it will help them to grow and rehabilitate themselves. Also, it makes them behave in a good manner in the jail as they try to understand that they have a family now ad have to serve them properly after coming out of the prison.
The NABHA Case: 2016
Where a man tied knot in Jail.
A Convict Mandeep Singh, who is serving lifetime imprisonment as he was charged with the murder of two people, one of Sarpanch and the other of his Gunman, he tied a nuptial knot in the Nabha Prison. He asked for parole but the Punjab and Haryana High Court rejected his plea while ordering the Administrative staff of the jail to make arrangements to solemnized their marriage in the jail itself. Mandeep Singh was married to Pawandeep Kaur of Khanna, Punjab who took nuptial vows with the Mandeep’s photograph in 2016. He was not granted parole by the High Court because of the Critical police report.
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