NEW DELHI: Saying that “live-in relationships” are a reality particularly in urban areas and the law must adapt itself to serve those who choose this form of relationship and protect them from harassing partners, the Supreme Court Monday brought them under the ambit of Section 498A of the IPC or Section 85 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) where a husband or in-law shall be punished with imprisonment for a term up to three years for subjecting a woman to cruelty.A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and N K Singh rejected the plea that 498A is confined only to a husband married to a woman in the traditional sense. “Since the provision was aimed at solving a societal issue, it is this larger objective of securing equality for women, stepping away from the superiority of males that is an inheritance from bygone days, that has to inform the understanding in interpretation and implementation of the Section,” SC said.It, however, clarified that only those “live-in relationships” which are in the nature of marriage will come within the ambit of Section 498A of IPC or Sec 85 of BNS. “Cruelty does not check at the door whether the house it’s entering is that of a married woman or not. Once it enters, its propensity to destroy is aggravated,” it said.SC, however, took note of the growing instances of alleged misuse of Section 498A. Describing as worrisome the trend of the section being misused and employed as a means of settling scores and ventilating grievances, SC said its verdict would be applicable to only those ‘relationships in the nature of marriage’ and the initial burden of proof would be on the female live-in partner seeking protection of the law.“When the objective of the Section 498A was to provide coverage to those cases where harassment by husband or in-laws through wilful conduct causing mental or physical injury or driving the woman to suicide, then to say that such harassment can only be caused when they are married and not before that, in our considered view, would be a case of over simplification. Whether or not the woman in question is married or not, in the present day, does not have a proximate link to the objective of the section, which is to prevent cruelty in such a household setting,” Justice Karol, who penned the verdict, said.The court said the law must respond to changing times, and bringing live-in relations within the ambit of Section 498A is needed. “Marriage was considered to be sacrosanct, which undoubtedly is a changing phenomenon. Living together, prior to marriage, is not unheard of or unacceptable anymore. In the same way, that same-sex relations, once criminalised and deemed to be a mental illness, have now been decriminalised and recognised as naturally occurring.
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This is the evolution of societal standards,” SC said.“Not a single person goes into a relationship knowing or anticipating that cruelty may be meted out to them. When a couple sets out on their journey, it is always, one presumes, with the best of intentions and to bring joyfulness of all forms. With the passage of time, however, some relationships may go down this troublesome path. The law must provide for the same. This distinction between “married” and “live-in relationship in the nature of marriage”, in as much as it relates to the protection envisaged by Section 498A, has no rational nexus with the object of preventing domestic violence and is as such offensive to Article 14 of the Constitution,” the bench said.
