The top court will hear the case again in the first week of May.
A 26-year-old woman from Karnataka, who alleged that she was forced to marry by her parents without her consent and eventually escaped to Delhi, will be provided security cover.
The woman, an engineer, had filed a petition in the Supreme Court in which she had alleged that she wanted to marry a man of other caste, but was threatened to wed her parents' choice last month. She added that her fiance was informed and even he refused to marry her, but his parents forced him to tie the knot. The two got maaried on March 14 in Gulbarga in Karnataka.
Three weeks later, she ran away from home and soon after wrote to the Chief Justice of India seeking the top court's intervention into the cancellation of her marriage. She has been in Delhi since and is being assisted by the Delhi Commission for Women.
After hearing her plea this afternoon, the top court directed the Delhi police to provide protection to her. While the bench declined to interfere with her marriage, it said that according to the law, a marriage can be cancelled if it is forced without or fraudulent consent. The top court will hear the case again in the first week of May.
When Indira Jaising, who was representing the woman, also sought striking down of certain provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act on the grounds that the consent of the bride or the groom has not been made mandatory in the law, the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, including Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud said that it won't go into the interpretation of the Act.