Investigate Crime, Not Marriages: Allahabad HC to Police

When "Just Following Up on a Complaint" Becomes a Constitutional Violation Picture the Station House Officer at

Suriyawan when the woman's father walks in. He is agitated, respected in the community and insistent that his daughter has been taken from him. He wants an FIR. Filing it costs the SHO nothing that day - it is the path of least resistance, the choice that keeps a local complainant satisfied and avoids an uncomfortable confrontation with a parent who may escalate to political pressure if refused. The easy answer would be that registering the complaint is simply doing the job - a citizen alleged a crime, the police investigated.

But the Allahabad High Court's rebuke exposes what that framing conveniently ignores: the "crime" here was never a crime at all. It was two adults, aged 27 and 28, both postgraduates, exercising a choice the Constitution has already settled as theirs to make.

THE FRAMEWORK

This is a case where deontological duty and institutional incentive pull in opposite directions. The police's duty under the Constitution - reinforced explicitly by the Supreme Court in Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M. and *Lata Singh v.

State of U.P.* - is to protect an adult's Article 21 liberty to choose a partner, not to adjudicate whether that choice pleases the family. Yet the institutional incentive facing a local SHO is different: a complainant with local standing is present and vocal, while the "victim" the law is meant to protect - the couple - often has no one in the room advocating for them until they can afford to move court.

This is where constitutional morality, as a standard of governance, does real work. Constitutional morality asks officials to hold to constitutional values even when social morality - here, a father's expectation of consent over his daughter's marriage - points the other way.

The police at Suriyawan chose social morality over constitutional morality and did so at direct cost to two citizens who had committed no offence.

THE RESOLUTION

The correct course was never in doubt on the facts - this was not a genuine two-sided ethical dilemma about outcomes. But it was a real test of institutional courage: the harder, correct path required an SHO willing to tell an influential complainant that his complaint disclosed no cognizable offence, knowing that decision might invite local friction, allegations of inaction or informal pressure from someone with standing in the community.

The easier, wrong path required nothing but compliance with the loudest voice in the room. The High Court's decision to fine the police personally - not just quash the FIR - signals that "the family complained, so we investigated" is no longer an acceptable shield.

Institutional courage, here, meant an officer's willingness to bear a complainant's displeasure in order to protect a citizen who wasn't even asking to be protected - only to be left alone.