Legal Reference Library

The Supreme Court, in Nidhi Vs. Ram Kripal Sharma, has held that the marriage of a landlady as subsequent event cannot extinguish the bona fide requirement of a landlady urged in a release application filed prior to her marriage. Being married and shifting to other place does not automatically result in extinguishing of bona fide requirement of the appellant, as being the owner of property, she alone is to decide what she wants to do with her property, a bench comprising  Justice Dipak Misra and Justice R Banumathi observed, while setting aside a high court order, which had held otherwise. The court observed that for the purpose of coming to the conclusion on bona fide need of the landlord, comparative hardship to the parties will have to be taken into consideration.  The bench said the landlady has established her bona fide requirement for accommodating her parents and grandparents in the suit premises and merely because she got married amidst the proceedings, it d...

Quashing a family court verdict, the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court allowed an Amravati woman to end her marriage by ruling that “suspecting wife’s character is cruelty to her”. The wife, an engineer, had approached the family court for divorce after 13 years of tumultuous marriage citing her husband’s supposed inferiority complex and continual ill-treatment, including bouts of physical abuse. “It is clear husband’s conduct in suspecting wife’s character, physically assaulting and harassing her, as she was coming home late from work due to nature of her job, are the facts duly established amounting to cruelty. Therefore, the wife is entitled to a decree of divorce on same ground,” a bench of Justice Vasanti Naik and Justice Indira Jain held. After entering into matrimony on March 11, 2000, the couple started residing in Wardha in a joint family. Soon cracks appeared in marriage as petitioner’s in-laws were allegedly uncomfortable with her educational qualifications. Though she op...

Cases Reported in 2014 SCC Vol. 7 August 28, 2014 Part 4 For the offence of desertion so far as the deserting spouse is concerned, two essential conditions must be there (1) the factum of separation, and (2) the intention to bring cohabitation permanently to an end (animus deserendi). Similarly two elements are essential so far as the deserted spouse is concerned: (1) the absence of consent, and (2) absence of conduct giving reasonable cause to the spouse leaving the matrimonial home to form the necessary intention aforesaid. For holding desertion as proved the inference may be drawn from certain facts which may not in another case be capable of leading to the same inference; that is to say the facts have to be viewed as to the purpose which is revealed by those acts or by conduct and expression of intention, both anterior and subsequent to the actual acts of separation. Malathi Ravi v. B.V. Ravi, (2014) 7 SCC 640

The Bombay High Court, while quashing the order of the sessions court refusing maintenance to a second wife by the husband, held that it was not required for the woman to prove her marriage through documentary evidence, if the couple lived together. The woman had challenged a 2005 order of the Kolhapur sessions court, which had, while allowing the maintenance of Rs500 to the daughter, turned down that of the woman on the grounds that the husband was already married and his spouse was alive. The husband argued before the High Court that maintenance under section 125 of the CrPC can only be granted to the legally married wife. This ground was strongly opposed by the woman, saying that it was a summary remedy and the same was not intended to affect the civic rights of the party. After going through several Supreme and High Court judgments, the court held, "In matters of this nature, it is sufficient if the claimant prima facie satisfies the court that the claimant and responden...

While dismissing the petition challenging the validity of Section 7-A of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the Division Bench of S.K. Kaul, C.J. and T.S. Sivagananam, J. relying on the decision of S.Nagalingam v. Sivagami, (2001) 7 SCC 487, upheld the validity of Section 7-A [as inserted by the Hindu Marriage (Tamil Nadu Amendment) Act, 1967] as the provision applies to any marriage between two Hindus solemnized in the presence of relatives, friends or other persons and that the presence of a Priest is not mandatory for the performance of a valid marriage. Article referred: http://blog.scconline.com/post/2015/11/26/validity-of-s-7-a-of-the-hindu-marriage-act-1955-upheld/