Live-in Relationship: The recent comment of Allahabad High Court has again intensified the legal debate regarding live-in relationships of a married person. During the hearing of a case on March 25, the court said that if a married man is living in a consensual relationship with an adult woman, then it cannot automatically be considered a crime.
This comment is being considered different from the earlier stand of the court, due to which it is being seen as a U-turn.
This comment was made by the division bench of Justice JJ Munir and Justice Tarun Saxena in a case in which a live-in couple had sought protection due to threats from the woman’s family. During the hearing, the court clearly said that law and social morality should be kept separate. According to the report of ‘Hindustan Times’, the High Court said that if an act is not considered a crime in law, then the court cannot step back from protecting the rights of citizens on the basis of social perceptions alone. However, this comment of the court appears different from its recent decisions. On March 20, the Single Bench had taken the opposite stand in another case and said that no married person can live in a live-in relationship with a third person without obtaining a divorce while his spouse is alive. At that time the court had rejected the protection petition of a couple on this basis.
What was your earlier comment?
In an earlier decision, Justice Vivek Kumar Singh had said that personal liberty is not absolute and it cannot infringe the statutory rights of another person. He had also made it clear that a spouse has a legal right to live with his or her spouse, which cannot be taken away because of any other relationship. It is worth noting that earlier in December also, the High Court had made a similar comment and said that a married person cannot live in a live-in relationship with someone else without obtaining a legal divorce. During that time the court had also said that in such cases the rights of the second spouse cannot be ignored.
Need for clear legal guidelines
The latest comments have once again raised the question of whether clear legal guidelines are needed to strike a balance between personal freedom and social or marital obligations. Legal experts believe that the contradictory stances of different benches may create confusion and may require higher judicial interpretation on this issue in future. For now, these contradictory observations of the Allahabad High Court indicate that the debate over the balance between live-in relationships, marriage and personal liberty is still ongoing in the Indian judicial system.