A woman can’t sue her husband’s girlfriend, who has a live-in relationship with him, for causing mental cruelty because a concubine or a paramour isn’t a member of her matrimonial home.
A woman can’t sue her husband’s girlfriend, who has a live-in relationship with him, for causing mental cruelty because a concubine or a paramour isn’t a member of her matrimonial home.
A concubine may have caused mental cruelty to a legally wedded woman for impinging on her husband, but she can’t be tried under section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code, the Supreme Court (SC) has said.
The SC had earlier this month held that a lasting live-in relationship assumes the form of marriage, whereby the woman will be entitled to certain material benefits left behind by her partner.
Allowing an appeal by Sunita Jha, who was facing criminal charge under section 498-A for causing cruelty to Asha by living with her husband Mukund, the SC said that criminal charge can be invoked only against the husband or his relatives.
The provision cannot apply to a person who is not a “relation” of the husband when the alleged offence is said to have been committed against the wife.
Giving major relief to Sunita, justices Altamas Kabir and AK Patnaik quashed a Jharkhand high court ruling that allowed her prosecution under section 498-A. Asha had filed a criminal case against Sunita in 2005. She left her husband out of the complaint.
The law doesn’t recognise a married man’s girlfriend or a concubine as his relative since they are not “connected by blood or marriage” to him.
If a man is living with another woman besides his wife, is he causing “cruelty” under section 498-A? Answering the question, the SC said that if the “other woman” isn’t connected to the husband by blood or marriage, it would not attract section 498-A, though it could be an act of cruelty for the purpose of judicial separation or dissolution of marriage under marriage laws. But the section cannot be stretched to include causing “cruelty”, the SC has explained.
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