Madhya Pradesh High Court: Performing ‘marriage rituals’ and divorce does not entitle anyone to maintenance | Bhopal News

BHOPAL/JABALPUR: The MP High Court set aside a family court’s order asking the husband of a woman, whom she married after leaving her first husband, to pay her a monthly maintenance of Rs 10,000 after revealed that she had not divorced her first husband and was therefore not the legally married wife of the second husband.
Justice Rajendra Kumar Verma quashed the family court’s order and said that performing marriage rituals with a person does not necessarily give a person the status of a wife or husband. However, he gave liberty to the woman to file a separate suit under Section 22 of the DV Act in a competent court.
Appellant Bhagwan Das said in his petition that a family court in Singrauli had ordered him to pay Rs 10,000 to his wife under Section 125 of CrPC. His wife Panpati whom he married on March 29, 2017 under a mass marriage program organized under ‘Mukhyamantri Kanyadan Yojana’. She left him on August 11, 2017.
During the hearing, he told the court that Panpati was married to Sushil Kumar Gupta back in 2006-07. She left him after five to six years of marriage due to a marital dispute but did not officially divorce him. Without a divorce, a second marriage would not be legal and therefore she would not be entitled to alimony, he argued. However, the woman concerned told the court that she left her first husband by mutual consent after the divorce.
However, the court ruled that only the court had the right to grant a divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act. Since she did not divorce her first husband, she is not entitled to alimony from her second husband as the marriage is illegal. However, the court allowed the woman to file a separate complaint against the plaintiff under the provisions of Section 22 of the Domestic Violence Act.