The Supreme Court has refused to quash bigamy proceedings against a UK-based doctor who remarried after getting a divorce from an English court. The same Bench quashed the case against his parents and his second wife. The Bench of Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra and Justice Shree Chandrashekhar began by asking whether the sanctity of marital status can be allowed to yield to “forum non conveniens”, meaning the choice of a more convenient court.
Background
Dr. N. Sridhar Reddy married N. Geetha Prasanthi on 18 April 2003 at Sattenapalli, Andhra Pradesh, under Hindu rites. He moved to the United Kingdom in 2005, and she joined him in 2006. After the birth of their son in 2007, the relationship deteriorated. His divorce and custody petitions before a Narasaraopet court were dismissed, and he later withdrew his appeal in the High Court.
He became a British citizen on 1 February 2013 and filed for divorce at the Cambridge County Court that August. His wife objected to the court’s jurisdiction. A divorce decree was made absolute on 29 January 2014 on the ground of irretrievable breakdown of marriage. He married Geetha Inturi on 3 March 2014. In February 2016, the first wife lodged a complaint under Sections 494 and 120B read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code. The Andhra Pradesh High Court refused to quash the case in July 2019.
The Court examined Section 13 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which lists when a foreign judgment is not conclusive in India. Relying on Y. Narasimha Rao and Satya v. Teja Singh, it noted that irretrievable breakdown is not a statutory ground for divorce under Hindu law. The Bench said:
“In our view, the foreign divorce decree was passed in contravention of the existing matrimonial law in India and on a ground that is not even recognized statutorily. This not only violates the legal threshold of Section 13 of the CPC, which every foreign decree has to pass through, but also the observations made by this Court in Y. Narasimha Rao (supra) as to the conditions required to be fulfilled by a foreign decree to be enforceable in India.”
On the claim that British citizenship placed the second marriage beyond Indian law, the Court said:
“Enquiry for the offence of bigamy cannot be confined to the place of second marriage but must necessarily take into account the subsisting matrimonial relationship. Even otherwise, legal consequences flowing from the subsisting marriage cannot be defeated by a subsequent change in the nationality of accused No.1/husband.”
It also found that the wife’s objection to jurisdiction could not be treated as submission to the UK court. Bigamy was described as a continuing offence, so delay in the FIR did not help the husband at this stage.
For the parents, the Court found no overt act or agreement to commit bigamy. For the second wife, it observed:
“Criminal liability must be established qua each accused separately and, thus, continuance of the criminal proceedings against accused No.4 would result in an abuse of the process of law.”
The Court dismissed the husband’s appeal and allowed the appeals of his parents and second wife. It quashed the proceedings against them.
It clarified that its findings are limited to the present stage and are not a final view on the merits.
