Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court clarified that a case under 498-A or an application under Section 12 of the Domestic Violence Act against the husband amounts to an abuse of process of law when the marriage between the parties has been declared as null and void.
The court also declared that the wife was not entitled to be paid maintenance under Section 125 of the CrPC when there no marital relationship subsisting between the parties.
Justice Shameem Akther was dealing with a petition of retired Major Pankaj Rai, urging the court to quash an application under the Domestic Violence Act against him, and the two petitions by his second wife Krishnaveni Chenji, one challenging a trial court order which had acquitted Mr Rai in a Section 498-A case, and the other for application for maintenance.
Mr Rai, being the widower at the age of 56, married for a second time on December 13, 2014. His second wife Krishnaveni was a divorcee. She left Mr Rai after 33 days of staying together and made a complaint against him under section 498-A of the IPC and under the Domestic Violence Act.
Later, Mr Rai came to know that his second wife had suppressed factum of subsistence of her first marriage and the factum of filing before the High Court against the divorce granted between her and her first husband by the Family Court.
The metropolitan sessions court of Hyderabad had discharged Mr Rai from the case of cruelty (IPC sec 498-A), holding that the marriage performed between them was not a marriage in the eyes of the law and had no legal validity under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. The trial court had also dismissed the application for maintenance under section 125 of CrPC.
Challenging the lower court’s orders, Ms Krishnaveni approached the Telangana High Court in 2019. The judge heard the cases together along with the quash petition filed by Mr Rai in 2015.
The judge upheld the lower court’s orders and allowed the quashing of the petition asked for by Mr Rai, confirming that there was no marital relationship subsisting between the parties.
