Punjab and Haryana High Court News: Reinforcing the constitutional mandate of gender equality, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has set aside concurrent findings of trial courts in a 44-year-old case that restricted a widow’s right to alienate non-ancestral property.

Justice Virinder Aggarwal was hearing a plea challenging trial court orders in a case related to a sale deed made by the widow of a man without the consent of her husband’s relatives, who belong to the Meo community.

The petitioners challenged the trial court orders that relied on the Riwaj-i-Am of Gurgaon district, which stipulated that a widow’s interest is for life only and that she cannot alienate property, whether ancestral or self-acquired, without the consent of her husband’s relatives.

The Riwaj-i-Am of Gurgaon district, as codified by Wilson, contains explicit rules of customary law delineating the scope of a widow’s power of alienation.

“This Court has consistently adopted a pragmatic, progressive, and constitutionally aligned approach while examining customary restrictions on the rights of women in matters of alienation of property,” the court observed.

The order added that it has been unequivocally held that any custom which seeks to curtail, dilute, or abrogate the proprietary rights of a female exclusively based on religion, gender, or sex-based classification is inherently vulnerable to challenge and cannot withstand the constitutional mandate of equality enshrined under Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution of India.