Expanding the protection against domestic cruelty under criminal law, the Supreme Court has ruled that such protection, ordinarily given to married women under Section 498A of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code (IPC), extends to women in live-in relationships as well, provided the couple shares an “intent to marry”.
Since the IPC has now been replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the judgment will likely apply to the corresponding provision in the new law: Section 85 of the BNS. The judgment, delivered on Monday by a bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and N Kotiswar Singh, recognises that women facing cruelty in domestic settings cannot be denied the protection of criminal law merely because they have not undergone a formal marriage.
The legal position until now
Section 498A of the IPC penalises a husband or his relatives for subjecting a woman to cruelty. Because the provision explicitly uses the word “husband”, its application was traditionally restricted to legally valid marriages.
Over the years, the Supreme Court expanded this definition to cover such men who induced a woman into a marriage that is legally void or voidable — for instance, by hiding a previous subsisting marriage — holding that such men cannot claim that they were not a “husband” to escape prosecution for cruelty.
This was what had transpired in the present case as well. The accused man approached the courts to quash a Section 498A case filed by his partner, arguing that since he was already married to someone else, his relationship with the complainant was not a valid marriage.
The Karnataka High Court rejected this argument, ruling that when “a man induces a woman to believe that she is lawfully married to him, and thereafter subjects her to cruelty, [he] cannot be permitted to evade criminal responsibility on the plea that no valid marriage existed in law.” This led him to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Beyond void marriages
The Supreme Court could have dismissed the appeal by relying on the established precedent regarding void marriages, but the bench took up the broader question of whether a man in a live-in relationship can be prosecuted under Section 498A.
The judgment, written by Justice Karol, adopted a “purposive interpretation” of the law, noting that since the original objective of Section 498A was to deter domestic cruelty, the law must adapt to changing social realities, observing that “cruelty, any which way, does not check at the door, whether the house it enters is that of a married woman or not”.
The court reasoned that if a woman faces cruelty from her partner, it makes no logical sense to offer her the protection of criminal law if she is married, but deny it if she is cohabiting before marriage. This distinction, it said, “has no rational nexus with the object of preventing domestic violence and is as such offensive to Article 14 of the Constitution of India”, which guarantees the fundamental right to equality.
Why the Domestic Violence Act is not enough
During the hearings, both the petitioner and the union government argued against expanding Section 498A, pointing out that unmarried women are already protected under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence (DV) Act, 2005, since the Act expressly covers not just married persons but also those “related…through a relationship in the nature of marriage”.
The Supreme Court rejected this argument on the basis of the fundamental difference between the two laws. The DV Act, it pointed out, is primarily a piece of civil legislation providing remedies like maintenance and protection orders. The court said that equating it with Section 498A would be a “misstatement of law” because “the import of civil and criminal law is different” since “[o]ne has almost singularly civil and monetary consequences, whereas the other is backed by the force of criminal deterrence”.
Why ‘intent to marry’ is crucial
To determine which live-in couples get this protection of criminal law, the Supreme Court borrowed the concept of a “relationship in the nature of marriage” from the DV Act.
The court clarified that a “relationship in the nature of marriage” is a narrower legal subset of a general “live-in relationship”. Relying on a 2013 judgment by it, the court reiterated the features of such a relationship, which include pooling financial resources, sharing domestic arrangements, having a sexual relationship, and holding themselves out to society as being akin to spouses.
Monday’s judgment, however, added a caveat for the application of Section 498A: the couple must, in addition to the above, also have the “intent to marry”.
This is because, according to the court, while many relationships “may meet all the requirements to be a ‘relationship in the nature of marriage’”, the partners might choose never to enter matrimony. When this intent is absent, the court held, the relationship should not be equated with marriage for the purpose of invoking a penal provision and its “long list of adverse consequences”.
“Those relationships that are in the nature of marriage and also have the requisite intent to marry are the closest to marriage itself, and it is those relationships that shall be entitled to the protection of [Section 498A],” the court ruled.
The judgment noted that the initial burden of proof to establish this intent will lie on the female partner seeking the law’s protection. But it did not lay down specific parameters for how this internal “intent” is to be legally recognised.
The Supreme Court bench took up the broader question of whether a man in a live-in relationship can be prosecuted under Section 498A of the IPC. Photo: Image generated using AI 
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