Iqrar and Anr. vs State of U.P.& Ors.

The prayer of the two petitioners Iqrar s/o Sri Islam and Smt. Shaista Parveen, who claims herself to be daughter of Respondent No. 4 Abdul Adil and wife of Iqrar (Petitioner No. 1,) is to quash the first information report dated 711998 giving rise to registration of case crime No. 4 of 1998 P.S. Jaswantnagar, District Etawah as contained in Annexure3.

Perusal of Annexure3 shows that Respondent No. 4 Abdul Adil lodged a written information before Prabhari Nirikshak P.S. Jaswantnagar, District Etawah to the effect that her daughter Km. Shaista Parveen, aged about 15 years, had been enticed and kidnapped for the purposes of marriage by Iqrar s/o Mohd. Islam and his friends named therein and hence legal action be taken. The petitioners have come up with a claim that petitioner No. 2 is aged 20 years and they had performed their marriage before the date of alleged occurrence. In support of the claim of majority of petitioner No. 2 a certificate granted by C.M.O. Aligarh as contained in annexure4 has been produced.

Learned counsel appearing in support of this petition, in the aforementioned backdrop, contended that it is a fit case in which this Court should exercise its discretion and quash the impugned first information report.

This Court in this summary proceedings under Article 226 of the Constitution of India cannot determine as to what is the age of petitioner No. 2, whether she is about 15 years of age according to the informantRespondent No. 4 or 20 years of age as claimed by the petitioners. We are not in a position to record any positive finding in regard to the alleged marriage between the petitioners.

For the aforementioned reasons we dismiss this writ petition. However, in the interest of justice, at the same time we direct the I.O. of the crime case in question to look into the aforementioned aspects of the matter first before deciding to take any coercive steps against the petitioner No. 1 who alone has allegedly committed the offence along with his friends.

The office is directed to hand over a copy of this order to Sri Ghosh, learned A.G.A. for its communication to and follow up action by the I.O. concerned.