A District and Sessions Judge from Bihar, Khagaria district, Subhash Chandra Chaurasia has illegally placed his law graduate daughter under house arrest to prevent her from meeting her lover.

Reportedly, the Judge and his wife are opposed to the relationship between their daughter – 24-year-old Yashaswini, a law graduate of Chanakya National Law University, Patna and 25-years-old Siddharth Bansal, who is a lawyer practicing in the Supreme Court.

Their relationship came to light to the Judge and his wife when they saw Yashaswini interacting with Siddharth a day before Delhi Judicial Services Exam on May 6. Thereafter, Yashaswini was not allowed to write the exam because of apprehension that she would meet the boy again.

The couple’s ordeal doesn’t end there, after Yashasmini and her mother reached Bihar on May 8, her mother thrashed her and called up Siddharth to warn him to stay away from her daughter. Since then, Yashaswini was reportedly been kept under house arrest by Chaurasia and his wife.

To seek relief, Siddharth approached the National Commission for Women (NCW) and also went to the police, but no action has been taken so far. Pleas were also sent through email to Maneka Gandhi (Ministry of Child and Women Development) and Home Ministry Rajnath Singh, but it has not yielded any response.

The above act unquestionably establishes an offence under section 342 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 – Punishment for wrongful confinement which prescribes a punishment of imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees, or with both.

Moreover, the Supreme Court recently taking up a writ petition has said that, where two consenting adults agree to enter into matrimony, no individual rights, group rights or collective rights shall interfere therein or harass the couple. Astonishingly, in this case not a common man but a judge who is expected to know the law has himself contravened the rule established by the Apex Court, leaving in dispute the justice delivery system of the country.