Live-in partners can be tried for cruelty under 498A: HC

THe mysore heights margaret court has held that plane section 498A of the native american Penal Code, which punishes cruelty by a husband or his relatives, can apply even to “live-in relationships” and to “void or voidable marriages.”In an order passed on November 18, justice Suraj Govindaraj ruled that the term “husband” is not just limited to a man in a legally valid marriage, but that it extends to anyone who enters a marriage-like relationship, or an arrangement that bears the attributes of marriage, including a live-in relationship.In such cases, one can be booked and tried under Section 498 A, which is now replaced by Sections 85 and 86 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, “so long as the ingredients of cruelty are proved,” the court said.“I hold that the expression ‘husband’ in Section 498A IPC is not confined to a man in a legally valid marriage, but extends to one who enters into a marital relationship which is void or voidable, as also to a live-in relationship which bears the attributes of marriage, so long as the essential ingredients of cruelty as defined in the explanation to the section are satisfied,” the high court said.The court made the observations while hearing a petition filed by a man seeking quashing of a case registered against him following a complaint by his second wife. According to the complaint, the petitioner already had a subsisting marriage with a woman with whom he also had a daughter. Despite this, he married another woman in 2010.His second relationship ended in 2016 and the second wife filed a complaint initiating proceedings under Section 498A of the IPC against him, alleging cruelty, demands for dowry, and physical violence. She also claimed the man had hid his first marriage from her.The petitioner’s counsel, however, argued that he cannot be charged under Section 498A because the complainant was not his legally wedded wife.---Advocate Harsha Kumar Gowda, the counsel for the petitioner, argued that since the earlier marriage was valid, no lawful second marriage could have occurred, and at best the arrangement with the complainant was a “live-in relationship.”Gowda submitted that Section 498A can only be invoked in case of a legal marriage.The high court, however, disagreed. It noted that Section 498A intended to protect women from cruelty by a husband or his relatives and that the provision was a “remedial, socially beneficial safeguard meant to uphold women’s dignity and safety.”The court refused to quash the proceedings against the petitioner and said that accepting the petitioner’s argument would lead to an unjust outcome for it would benefit a man who had hid an existing marriage and induced a woman into a void relationship.This, the court said, would undermine the purpose of the law and enable fraud and exploitation.“A man who leads a woman to believe she is legally married to him, and then subjects her to cruelty, cannot avoid liability simply because the marriage is void in law,” the court said.It noted that the petitioner and the complainant woman lived together in a relationship with all the characteristics of a marriage. Such a “relationship in the nature of marriage,” or “live-in relationship,” falls within the scope of Section 498A, so long as the allegations meet the definition of cruelty under the provision, the high court said.The court rejected the petitioner’s argument that a mere live-in relationship falls outside Section 498A, and held that what matters is the “substance of the relationship, not its legal validity.”“If a couple lives as husband and wife and the woman faces cruelty, she cannot be denied protection simply because the man hid his existing marriage. Since Section 498A aims to address social wrongdoing, it must be interpreted liberally—especially where the woman believed the marriage was valid and only the man knew it was void and now seeks to use that fact to escape liability,” Justice Govindaraj said.