The Bombay high court on April 1 dismissed an appeal filed by Anita Advani to recognise her long-term relationship with late actor Rajesh Khanna as marriage. Justice Sharmila Deshmukh ruled that by Advani’s pleadings, it “is evident that the substantive relief sought is of being declared as widow” of Rajesh Khanna, “which is a necessary sequitur of the declaration…”, but the relationship does not satisfy the tests formulated by the Supreme Court over recognition of a live-in relation as a marriage.
Rajesh Khanna was not divorced from his estranged actress-wife, Dimple Khanna, the high court was informed.
Following Khanna’s demise in 2012, Anita Advani and members of his family have been locked in a legal battle. Anita filed a suit in 2015 before the Dindoshi city civil court in Bombay against Dimple and others, including daughter Twinkle and son-in-law Akshay Kumar, to have her long-term relationship with the late actor to be taken as akin to a marriage. When her plea was rejected in 2017, she went in appeal before the high court.
The HC said, the trial court had rightly applied the test to hold that “no fruitful purpose would be served by going ahead” with a civil trial — which would require deposition of Khanna’s family members and others — and unnecessarily protract the proceedings. “There has to be cumulative satisfaction of the test… which lays down the criteria that the parties must be otherwise qualified to enter into a legal marriage, including being unmarried, is clearly not satisfied in the present case,” the HC said. The declaration “seeks equivalence with marriage and marital relationship and must, therefore, also satisfy the essential tests for valid marriage although not formally married,” the HC explained.
Twinkle had sought dismissal of Advani’s suit before the Dindoshi court on the ground that the suit was barred by law, broadly since the marriage between her parents — Rajesh Khanna and Dimple — was not dissolved and under the Hindu Marriage Act, there can be no marriage if one of the parties had a spouse living and hence there can be no declaration, as sought by Advani, of being Rajesh Khanna’s widow.
The HC observed that in the absence of requirements of valid marriage, as set out in the Hindu Marriage Act, not being satisfied, the relationship between Anita Advani and Rajesh Khanna had the “character of live-in relationship”. Finding no merit in Advani’s appeal, the HC dismissed it.