When 28-year-old Shubhangini Shukla chose to marry Pravi Gupta, 27, the man she loved, she already expected opposition from her family. What she perhaps did not anticipate was that the fight for her life choice would end with the Allahabad High Court censuring her family and the Uttar Pradesh Police.
On July 27, a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court, comprising Justices J.J. Munir and Tarun Saxena, quashed the FIR her father had lodged against her and her husband, ruling that the police had “no business” investigating the marriage of two consenting adults. The court also imposed costs on both the police and her father for pursuing the case despite clear evidence that the marriage was voluntary.
A marriage, then a complaint
Ms. Shukla — represented by advocate Abhishek Srivastava, chairman of Human Rights Protection Organisation (HRPO) — holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics, and has also completed a B.T.C./D.El.Ed. teaching qualification. She met her husband in college, and after nearly two years of dating, the two decided to spend their lives together. He is a newly appointed assistant teacher at a primary school in Madhya Pradesh.
The couple married according to Hindu Vedic rituals on February 18, 2026, at the Arya Vedic Sabha in Prayagraj. A marriage certificate from the ceremony, along with photographs, was placed on record before the High Court.
Speaking to The Hindu, Ms. Shukla said the trouble began nearly two months later. On April 17, 2026, she informed her father, Prakash Narayan Shukla, about the marriage. The news, she said, “annoyed him much enough” that he, along with other relatives, allegedly assaulted her and threatened to kill both her and her husband.
She left her parental home the same day and sent a written application by registered post to Bhadohi Superintendent of Police Abhinav Tyagi and the then Station House Officer of Suriyavan police station, Manish Dwivedi, seeking protection for herself and her husband.
“I had already anticipated that my family would not accept my marriage easily because it was not just an inter-caste marriage, but also because the boy was younger than me. But that they would beat and threaten to kill me was something I had never imagined,” she said.
Despite the woman informing the police of her marriage and submitting documents to establish that she had married of her own free will, an FIR was registered against her husband on April 19, 2026, based on a complaint by her father. He was booked under Section 87 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which deals with kidnapping, abducting or inducing a woman to compel her marriage.
“Almost contumacious”: The court’s rebuke of the police
Aware of her legal rights, Ms. Shukla approached the High Court seeking protection and the quashing of the FIR against her husband.
SP Abhinav Tyagi’s compliance affidavit, filed before the High Court, laid out how the investigation had proceeded and, in the process, undercut the central allegation in the FIR. The affidavit referred to the letters Ms. Shukla had written to the police before the FIR was lodged. The court also recorded her statement.
What appeared to frustrate the Bench most was not the original FIR, but the police’s insistence — even after the High Court’s interim order — that the investigation had to continue. In its response, the SP argued that both petitioners still needed to have their statements formally recorded: first before the investigating officer under Section 180 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, and then before a judicial magistrate under Section 183.
The Bench was unsparing in its response.
“…it is almost contumacious. After the petitioner has had her statement recorded by a Division Bench of the High Court, no court in the State or police authority has any business, in a matter like the present one, recording any further statement of the first petitioner and forming a different opinion on its basis,” the court observed.
If the police wished to close the file, the judges said, they already had everything they needed to do so.
The court went further, observing that the police appeared to be “siding with” Ms. Shukla’s father by continuing to pursue the investigation even after the couple’s marriage had been placed beyond doubt. It held that the liberty of a major citizen under Article 21 of the Constitution includes the freedom to choose one’s life partner, and that continuing a criminal investigation into that choice amounted to an abuse of the process of law as well as a violation of that fundamental right.
“The police have no business in the matter to be nosy parkers… They ought to investigate crimes. This is no crime where any investigation is required,” the Bench said.
Mr. Tyagi told The Hindu that the police would ensure compliance with the court’s directions. Asked about the costs imposed on him and the Station House Officer, he said he was exploring the available legal options.
Ms. Shukla said that she feels secured after the HC’s intervention but doesn’t deny the fact that her family will still try to break her marriage in all possible ways.
Published – July 31, 2026 09:57 pm IST
