Married Muslims Cannot Claim Right To Live-In Relationship: Allahabad HC

Lucknow: The Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow bench has observed that Muslims cannot claim the right to live-in relationship when they are married.

Islam does not allow it, a bench of Justice A R Masoodi and Justice A K Srivastava said on Wednesday while hearing the writ petition of Bahraich residents Sneha Devi and Mohammad Shadab Khan.

Sneha and Shadab had claimed they were in a live-in relationship and free to stay together as they were adults. They had sought police protection under Article 21 (protection of life and personal liberty) after Sneha’s family had filed an FIR against Shadab alleging that he kidnapped their daughter and married her.

The bench got to know that Shadab married Farida Khatoon in 2020, and the couple had a child.

“Islamic tenets do not permit live-in relationships during the subsisting marriage. The position may be different if the two persons are unmarried and the parties being major choose to lead their lives in a way of their own,” the high court said, as reported by PTI.

Refusing the petitioners’ appeal for protection, the court observed: “The constitutional morality may come to the rescue of such a couple, and the social morality settled through the customs and usages over ages may give way to the constitutional morality and protection under Article 21 of the Constitution of India may step in to protect the cause. The case before us is, however, different.

“The constitutional protection under Article 21 of the Constitution of India would not lend an un-canalised support to such a right, once the usages and customs prohibit such a relationship between the two individuals of different faiths,” the two-judge bench said, The Times of India reported.