Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has held that a woman who knowingly enters into a relationship with a married man during the subsistence of his first marriage is not entitled to relief under the DV Act,
as such a relationship does not qualify as a “relationship in the nature of marriage”. The court was hearing a petition filed by a 34-year-old woman challenging a 2016 order of the Pune Sessions Court, which had set aside the reliefs granted to her by a magistrate.
The woman had sought protection and monetary reliefs under the DV Act against a 55-year-old former professor, claiming that she had married him and lived with him as his wife despite his existing marriage. The magistrate had directed the man to pay Rs28,000 per month as maintenance, awarded Rs5 lakh as compensation.
In an appeal by the man and his family, the sessions court overturned the magistrate’s order. The woman then approached the High Court. The petitioner alleged that she met the man while she was an engineering student and he was a professor at her college. She claimed he misrepresented that his wife was mentally ill and that divorce proceedings were underway.
Acting on this assurance, she alleged, the two married secretly in 2005 and later cohabited at various places, including Mumbai and Pune. To establish a “relationship in the nature of marriage”, she relied on documents relating to IVF treatment, joint property purchases and the birth certificate of their son.
The man’s advocate relied on Supreme Court precedents to argue that a relationship entered into with a married man, with full knowledge of his marital status, does not attract the protections of the DV Act. Agreeing with this view, the High Court observed that “all live-in relationships are not ‘relationships in the nature of marriage’”.
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