STAY ON FAMILY COURT PROCEEDINGS TO CONTINUE: HC | 12 October, 2019

The Bombay high court has continued a stay on the family court proceedings in a plea filed by Marathi film actress Smita Gondkar for annulment of her marriage to former corporator Siddharth. The actress had challenged a family court order refusing to allow her to produce as evidence a video of her 2010 wedding and proof of their visits to a doctor as a “married couple”. She had filed for annulment of marriage in 2012. She filed an application in the family court in June 2019 to reopen evidence and allow her to present proof of their wedding.

The high court bench of Justice Akil Kureshi and Justice S.J. Kathawalla allowed her to convert her appeal against a Pune family court order into a writ petition after her “husband” objected to the maintainability of the appeal. The erstwhile corporator has denied that he was ever married to her. He said, the marriage video, she was referring to, was shot when Smita wanted to shoot a marriage scene with him. The ex-corporator is already married.