MANGALA PRALHAD AWAD Vs. PRALHAD HARIBHAU AWAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE Family Court having disposed of the application under S. 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure by its order dated 5/11/1990 before the commencement of the Family Courts (Amendment) Act 1991 amending S. 19 of the Parent Act of 1984, the present appeal is maintainable. It is not, as it cannot be, disputed that the right to appeal has been taken away only in respect of such orders as are passed by the Family Courts under S. 125 of the Code after the commencement of the Amendment Act of 1991 amending S. 19 and since then such orders can only be challenged in the provisional jurisdiction of this Court under S. 19 (4) of the Act as it now stands.

(2.) THE only question of law involved in this case is whether a woman married to a man during the subsistence of the latter's former marriage can successfully invoke the provisions of S. 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and maintain an application for maintenance. The parties are Hindus and the marriage in question has admittedly taken place after the commencement of the Hindu Marriage act, 1955 prohibiting bigamous marriage and providing categorically that a marriage shall be null and void if any of the parties to such a marriage has a spouse living at the time of marriage.

(3.) THE case unfolds a most unfortunate state of affairs of great hardship to the applicant woman and of deplorable depravity on the part of the respondent opposite party. The respondent, in opposing the application for maintenance by the applicant, unashamedly made out a case that he was married to some other woman but nevertheless picked up intimacy with the applicant as a result whereof the applicant conceived and gave birth to a child. And that the applicant thus not being a legally wedded wire, was not entitled to maintenance under S. 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.