Manish & Jyoti: A love story of a mannish boy

It’s not quite The Graduate, and it’s certainly not ‘love jihad’. But this case bears marks of both. The Allahabad High Court weighed in on the case of 16-and-a-half-years-old Manish Kumar cohabiting with 18-year-old . The supposed ‘marriage’ of the two was illegal, since the ‘husband’ was a minor and, therefore, doesn’t qualify for the Big M. But what about cohabitation as partners? Uh-uh, says the law. If a minor girl can’t ‘live together’ with a major boy (at least 18), then neither can a minor boy cohabit with a major girl. Both would break the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012.

But there’s a twist to this tale of lawed-in love. Enter: Jyoti’s ‘mother-in-law’. She wants custody of her son, but he wants to stay with the ‘other woman’. True, 16-and-a-half and 18 are tricky ages. We aren’t sure how old Laila-Majnu and Heer-Ranjha were — and Romeo-Juliet would be barely out of their tweens. But the law doth not know the language of hormones, or love. Playing Solomon, the court decided that Manish will stay at a child care institution till he turns 18. For a country that calls its youngsters ‘children’ when they are well into their 20s, the tale of Manish and Jyoti will remain immortal — at least until February 4, 2022, when the Mannish Boy turns into a full-fledged legally attested man.