NEW DELHI: A man in his 40s, married with two daughters, moved the Supreme Court seeking to free a 21-year-old woman from illegal custody of her parents claiming that she considered him to be her spiritual live-in partner and challenged a Kerala high court order giving custody to her parents against her choice.
Kailas Natarajan, who claimed to have renounced worldly life of a doctor at the age of 42 years despite completing MRC (Psych) from London, filed a habeas corpus petition challenging the Kerala HC s decision to send 21-year-old Lekshmi by citing the SC s Hadiya case judgment, where the constitutional court had given weightage to the right of an adult woman to choose her life partner while insulating her from parental influence even when her father had alleged that it was a case of love jihad .