Protecting women who are duped into a second marriage and later denied maintenance by the man already having a legally wedded wife, the Supreme Court has decided to treat such cases on a different footing by treating such women as “wife” who will be entitled to receive maintenance for her and children born out of the wedlock.
Taking a compassionate approach towards the hapless woman trapped in such situation, the court held that the law must come to such a person’s aid. The bench of Justices Ranjana Desai and AK Sikri said, “Provision of maintenance (under Section 125 CrPC) aims at empowering the destitute and achieving social justice or equality and dignity of the individual. While dealing with cases under this provision, drift in the approach from “adversarial” litigation to social context adjudication is the need of the hour.”
The court was considering the plight of a woman Urmila who was cheated into marriage by a man Badshah in 2005 who had a legally wedded wife and two children. He refused to pay maintenance to Urmila and their 13-year-old daughter on the ground that she was not “wife” within the definition of Section 125 CrPC as his first marriage subsisted on the date the second marriage took place.
Rejecting the argument of the husband, the judges held, “We should avoid a construction which would reduce the legislation to futility and should accept the bolder construction based on the view that Parliament would legislate only for the purpose of bringing about an effective result. If this interpretation is not accepted, it would amount to giving a premium to the husband for defrauding the wife.” The petition of the husband was dismissed and for purpose of claiming maintenance, the court declared that where woman are kept in the dark about their husband’s first marriage, they will be treated as the “legally wedded wife” for purpose of seeking maintenance.
But the court drew a distinction. It said, “We are dealing with a situation where the marriage between the parties has been proved. However, the petitioner was already married. But he duped the respondent by suppressing the factum of alleged first marriage. On these facts, in our opinion, he cannot be permitted to deny the benefit of maintenance to the respondent, taking advantage of his own wrong.”