According to Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), a wife cannot claim maintenance from her second husband while her first marriage is still valid. The Madhya Pradesh High Court, upon discovering that the woman had not given divorce to her first husband and therefore was not legally the wife of the second person, cancelled an order of a family court that had directed the woman’s first husband to pay a monthly maintenance allowance of Rs. 10,000.
Justice Rajendra Kumar Verma, overturning the decision of the Family Court, stated that “it should be noted that divorce decree can only be granted by a court, and such agreements are not considered valid under the law. Therefore, it can be reduced that during the alleged marriage, the respondent was already married to other people, namely Sunil Kumar Gupta, and he was alive.”
Furthermore, under Section 125 of the CrPC, a ‘wife’ is included, which refers to a woman who has been divorced by her husband or has obtained a divorce from her husband and has not remarried. As discussed above, although a woman may not have the legal status of a wife, the inclusive definition of ‘wife’ is used to maintain continuity for the purpose of legal provisions. However, the second wife, whose marriage is void due to the existence of the first marriage, will not be considered a legally married wife and therefore will not be entitled to maintenance under this provision.
In their plea, the appellant, Bhagwan Das, stated that a family court in Singrauli had ordered him to pay his wife Rs. 10,000 under Section 125 of the CrPC. His wife, Panipati, whom he married under the “Chief Minister Kanyadan Yojana” mass marriage program on March 29, 2017, left him on August 11, 2017.
During the hearing of the case, he informed the court that Panipati was previously married to Sushil Kumar Gupta. Due to marital discord, he divorced her after 5-6 years of marriage, but he did not give her a formal divorce.
He argued that without divorce, the second marriage is not legal, and thus he is not liable to pay maintenance. On the other hand, the woman informed the court that after the divorce, she had voluntarily left her first husband with mutual consent.