Supreme Court: Dealing with a pivotal question that whether a
‘live-in-relationship’ would amount to ‘relationship in the nature of
marriage’ under Section 2(f) of the Protection of Women from Domestic
Violence Act, 2005 (DV Act), the Court held that all
live-in-relationships are not relationships in the nature of marriage
and when the woman is aware of the fact of the marital status of her
partner, she commits an intentional tort i.e. interference in the
marital relationship with intentionally alienating respondent from his
family, hence, she could not be said to have entered into a
live-in-relationship in the nature of marriage.
However, considering the
increasing number of such relationships, the 2-judge bench of Hon’ble
K.S. Radhakrishnan and Pinaki Chandra Ghose, JJ said that Parliament
needs to bring in proper legislation or make a proper amendment of the
DV Act, so that women and the children, born out of such relationships
be protected, though those types of relationship might not be a
relationship in the nature of a marriage.
In the present case,
the Court rejected the claim of maintenance on ground that the
appellant was fully aware of the marital status of the respondent and
that the respondent had never held out to the public that she was his
wife. Also, the fact the pregnancy was terminated on three occasions
showed that parties never entertained any intention to rear children.
[Indra Sarma v. V.K.V. Sarma, Criminal Appeal No. 2009 of 2013, decided
on November 26, 2013]
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