Indra Sarma v. V.K.V. Sarma: when a live-in relationship is in the nature of marriage

The question

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 protects an "aggrieved person" in a "domestic relationship". Section 2(f) defines a domestic relationship to include not only marriage and consanguinity but a relationship "in the nature of marriage". That phrase is the gateway through which every live-in maintenance or protection claim must pass: if the relationship is in the nature of marriage, the woman is an aggrieved person and the Act's machinery is available; if it is not, she falls outside the statute.

Indra Sarma v. V.K.V. Sarma, decided on 26 November 2013 by a two-judge bench of K.S. Radhakrishnan and Pinaki Chandra Ghose, JJ., with the judgment authored by Radhakrishnan, J., is the Supreme Court's authoritative map of that gateway. It builds on the earlier two-factor framing in D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal (2010) and remains the most-cited authority on who qualifies as an aggrieved person in a live-in claim.

The stakes are practical, not abstract. The Domestic Violence Act is a beneficial statute that gives an aggrieved person access to protection orders, residence orders, monetary relief and compensation through a quick and accessible forum. Whether a woman in a long cohabitation can reach that machinery turns entirely on the Section 2(f) characterisation of her relationship. If it is "in the nature of marriage", the protective architecture opens; if it is merely a live-in arrangement falling short of that standard, she is left to ordinary civil remedies that are slower, costlier and far less protective. Indra Sarma is the case that tells courts how to make that characterisation.

The facts

The appellant, an unmarried woman, met the respondent at work in 1992. They cohabited for roughly fourteen years. The appellant alleged that during the relationship she underwent pregnancy terminations, contributed to a joint business, and was ultimately excluded and abandoned without maintenance. Throughout, the respondent was a married man, with children, and the appellant was aware of his subsisting marriage.

When the relationship ended, the appellant invoked the DV Act, framing the long cohabitation as a relationship "in the nature of marriage" attracting maintenance and protection. The trial court and the appellate forum reached differing conclusions, and the High Court ultimately ruled against her. She appealed to the Supreme Court, which used the appeal not merely to decide her case but to authoritatively define the contours of Section 2(f).

The multi-factor test

The Court declined to treat cohabitation, however long, as automatically sufficient. A "relationship in the nature of marriage", it held, must resemble a legal, qualifying marriage — a relationship between parties who hold themselves out as akin to spouses and who are not under a legal disability to marry each other. To distinguish such relationships from arrangements that are merely live-in, the Court enumerated indicative factors.

These include the duration of the relationship; whether the parties shared a household; the pooling of resources and financial arrangements between them; the existence of a sexual relationship; whether they had children; the manner in which they socialised in public and presented themselves to friends, relations and society; and, above all, the intention and conduct of the parties. The list was offered as a guide, not an exhaustive checklist — a framework to be applied to the facts in their proper spirit rather than mechanically.

The Court drew the contrast deliberately. Casual cohabitation, a one-night arrangement, or a relationship maintained alongside and concealed from a subsisting marriage do not satisfy the standard, because none carries the public, durable, resource-sharing quality of a marriage-like union. By contrast, a couple who live together openly over years, present themselves to relatives and society as husband and wife, pool their finances, raise children and conduct their affairs as spouses may qualify even without a ceremony. The factors are not a points-tally; they are aspects of a single inquiry into whether the relationship has the substance and reputation of a marriage. The Court was explicit that the burden lies on the woman asserting the status to establish, on these factors, that her relationship answers the description in Section 2(f).

The framework also borrows from comparative material. The Court surveyed how other jurisdictions identify de facto or common-law relationships for the purpose of conferring spousal-type protections, and it located the Indian test within that comparative tradition while anchoring it firmly in the language of Section 2(f). The result is a test that is sensitive to social reality — it does not condemn the relationship — but disciplined by statutory text.

Knowledge of a subsisting marriage

The decisive factor on the facts was the appellant's knowledge of the respondent's subsisting marriage. Because a relationship "in the nature of marriage" presupposes a relationship resembling a legal, qualifying marriage between parties competent to marry, the Court held that a woman who knowingly enters a relationship with a man she knows to be married cannot ordinarily claim that status. The legal disability — the existing marriage — and her awareness of it placed the relationship outside Section 2(f).

The Court therefore dismissed the appeal and denied relief. But it did so with a candid acknowledgment that this left a protective gap. A woman in a long live-in arrangement, knowingly with a married man, may be excluded from the Act's protection even after years of cohabitation and contribution. The Court flagged the gap as a matter for Parliament, commending the issue to legislative attention rather than straining the statutory text to cover it. The restraint is part of the judgment's doctrinal character: the Court mapped the boundary of the Act faithfully and pointed to the legislature for any extension.

The result has been criticised as harsh, and the criticism has force. The woman in Indra Sarma had given fourteen years to the relationship, contributed to a joint business, and emerged with nothing; the man's existing marriage, of which she was aware, became the reason she fell outside a statute designed to protect women in exactly her position of vulnerability. The Court's answer was not that her grievance was unreal but that the Act, as drafted, did not reach it — and that to read it as reaching her would be to confer the status of a marriage-like relationship on a union that the law could not treat as resembling a valid marriage. Whether Parliament should fill the gap remains an open policy question; what Indra Sarma settles is that the judiciary will not fill it by interpretation.

Where it sits in the DV Act stack

Indra Sarma answers a logically prior question to most DV Act litigation. It decides whether there is a domestic relationship at all — the threshold of standing. Once that threshold is crossed, separate authority governs what follows: Satish Chander Ahuja v. Sneha Ahuja (2020), for instance, decides what household an aggrieved person can claim residence in. The two sit in sequence: Indra Sarma at the gateway, Satish Chander Ahuja at the residence question downstream.

For the wider family-law field, Indra Sarma extends the maintenance and protection lens beyond formal marriage to live-in arrangements, and it remains the necessary companion to D. Velusamy. Every contested live-in maintenance claim begins by testing the relationship against the Indra Sarma factors, and the knowledge-of-subsisting-marriage point continues to be litigated wherever one partner was married when the cohabitation began.

For the practitioner, the judgment yields a clear order of inquiry. The first question is always whether the relationship is one in the nature of marriage at all, tested against the enumerated factors; only if it crosses that threshold do the substantive reliefs of the Act become available. Where the partner was married — and the claimant knew it — the safer advice is that the DV Act route is unlikely to succeed, and the claim may have to be pursued, if at all, through other civil remedies. The case is therefore not merely a piece of doctrine but a screening tool, applied at the outset of every live-in matter to decide whether the statute is engaged before any further relief is even argued.

Related on Valkya

• Satish Chander Ahuja v. Sneha Ahuja: the shared household redefined
• Rajnesh v. Neha: maintenance guidelines and the Affidavit of Disclosure
• Rajesh Sharma v. State of U.P.: Section 498-A safeguards and Social Action Forum
• Joseph Shine v. Union of India: decriminalising adultery

Sources

1. SCC OnLine PDF hosted by the West Bengal Judicial Academy: https://www.wbja.nic.in/wbja_adm/files/2013_STPL(Web)_944_SC.pdf
2. Supreme Court Observer / LiveLaw — coverage of Indra Sarma v. V.K.V. Sarma (2013)
3. Cornell Law School (LII) Gender Justice resource — Indra Sarma v. VKV Sarma: https://www.law.cornell.edu/gender-justice/resource/indra_sarma_v_vkv_sarma
4. Supreme Court Observer — Domestic Violence Act jurisprudence: https://www.scobserver.in/