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Once the bench accepted the medical assessment of her age, it held her to be a major entitled to decide where she wished to live
Allowing the habeas corpus petition, the court directed that Saniya be released immediately. (News18 Hindi File)
The Allahabad High Court on November 28 ordered immediate release of a Muzaffarnagar woman kept in a Saharanpur protection home, holding that she is a major and cannot be confined by the police or her family.
A bench of Justices J.J. Munir and Sanjiv Kumar directed that Saniya, daughter of Muneer, “be set at liberty forthwith” after finding that the police had taken her into custody despite a subsisting stay on her and her lover’s arrest and had described the action as taking her into “kabza police”, a term the court noted is used for possession of property rather than human beings.
On November 20, the court had recorded in its interim order: “’Kabza’ is a word which connotes most closely to the English word ‘possession’ in legal and common parlance, both. It is reserved for chattels, not humans…The idea and the action – the idea more than the action, are both abhorrent”.
It had slammed the police saying: “To think that in the twenty-first century, a man of contemporary society, working in the ranks of the Police, can think that a human being can be taken into possession, on the basis of a memorandum of possession or fard, makes it seem to us that at least the persons concerned in this transaction have not come a long way from the days of Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)”.
A habeas corpus petition was filed by Vikas alias Ramkishan, who said Saniya was his wife and had been unlawfully detained. The couple stated that they married in January 2024 in Delhi and were living there when a fresh complaint was lodged by her father in June this year. The FIR accused Vikas, his brother and two others of enticing the girl away, claiming she was still a minor.
A few weeks earlier, on August 13, 2025, in a separate writ petition filed against the same FIR, the High Court had stayed the arrest of both Saniya and Vikas, directing them to cooperate in the investigation. The stay order, the bench recorded, had been communicated to the Senior Superintendent of Police, Muzaffarnagar, to the Station House Officer and noted in the case diary itself.
Despite this, on September 8, 2025, the investigating officer made a case-diary entry stating that Saniya had been taken into “kabza police” and prepared a “memo of possession,” which Vikas was made to sign. Taking exception to the terminology and the act itself, the court, on November 20, said the police had sought to avoid compliance with the stay order “by indulging in a crude and uneducated play of words”. The bench noted that the concept of “kabza” (possession) applies to objects, not people, and found the preparation of a memo of possession against a human being unacceptable.
Following this, the police produced Saniya before medical authorities for age determination. Reports dated September 9 and 10 from the District Hospital, Muzaffarnagar, assessed her age as around eighteen years based on ossification and dental development. However, the Child Welfare Committee, Muzaffarnagar, acting on the basis of a school record reflecting her date of birth as April 25, 2009, ordered her placement in the Rajkiya Bal Girha, Saharanpur.
To examine the age issue, the High Court summoned the original records of Ucchh Prathmik Vidyalaya, Ratheri, along with the principal. The principal informed the court that Saniya’s date of birth had been entered when she joined Class V and was based on her Aadhaar card. The court held that an Aadhaar-linked entry could not be treated as reliable evidence under Section 94(2) of the Juvenile Justice Act, especially in the absence of any birth certificate issued by a municipal body or panchayat. With no such document available, the bench concluded that the medico-legal report must prevail.
On being produced before the court, Saniya stated in clear terms that she wished to go with Vikas and did not want to return to her parents. Once the bench accepted the medical assessment of her age, it held her to be a major entitled to decide where she wished to live.
Allowing the habeas corpus petition, the court directed that Saniya be released immediately and declared that she is free to go anywhere she wants, including with Vikas.
About the Author
Salil Tiwari, Senior Special Correspondent at Lawbeat, reports on the Allahabad High Court and courts in Uttar Pradesh, however, she also writes on important cases of national importance and public in…Read More
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