Jaipur: The principal seat of Rajasthan High Court at Jodhpur dismissed a habeas corpus petition filed by a 24-year-old man seeking production of a woman who was already married to another man and had a three-month-old child from the marriage.The court held that “a live-in agreement cannot automatically confer legal standing on a person to seek a habeas corpus writ when the woman’s existing marriage continues to subsist, and there is no prima facie evidence of illegal detention.”A division bench of Justice Munnuri Laxman and Justice Ashutosh Kumar, in an Oct 15 order, also imposed Rs 25,000 on the petitioner, Mukesh, a resident of Bikaner’s Dholiya village. The amount is to be deposited with child secretariat within four weeks, failing which the court office will register a suo motu contempt case against him. The copy of the order was uploaded Saturday.The petitioner claimed that he and the woman voluntarily entered into a live-in relationship agreement on Oct 1. He accused her relatives of illegally detaining her despite complaints to the police and representations seeking protection. He approached the court seeking her production through a habeas corpus writ.Opposing the petition, govt advocate-cum-additional advocate general Deepak Choudhary submitted that the woman’s marriage with another man continued to subsist and that the couple had a three-month-old child. “The petitioner suppressed these material facts and that the agreement could neither confer marital status on him nor override the legal rights of her existing husband,” Choudhary argued.The bench agreed that the petitioner lacked locus standi to maintain the petition. “A subsequent live-in relationship cannot ordinarily be regarded as a relationship in the nature of marriage when a valid earlier marriage remains subsisting. Also, the petition did not disclose any prima facie material establishing that the woman was being illegally detained by her parents or relatives,” the court said.Emphasising that habeas corpus is a remedy to protect personal liberty, the court said its issuance requires cogent evidence of unlawful detention and cannot be sought as a routine measure.
