Maternal grandmother's locus to maintain a section 125 CrPC plea for a minor: Punjab & Haryana HC

Note on cause-title

The cause-title in this matter has been anonymised in this digest to protect the minor child's identity, in line with the reporting convention followed by the primary press coverage. The High Court's order itself sits on a criminal revisional file. The petitioner before the High Court was the contesting party in the maintenance proceedings; the respondent before the High Court was the maternal grandmother who had instituted the section 125 CrPC application on the minor's behalf. The substantive reasoning is reproduced below without inferring any identifying particulars beyond what the press summaries disclose.

The facts in brief

A minor child whose parental relationship had broken down was, by the time of the application in question, in the actual care and custody of her maternal grandmother. The grandmother bore the day-to-day burden of the child's upbringing — schooling, healthcare, food, clothing and the emotional support that the absent parental household could no longer provide.

In that setting, a maintenance petition under section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure was instituted before the trial court (a Judicial Magistrate exercising the jurisdiction conferred by s. 125 CrPC, which is now ported into s. 144 BNSS). The petition sought maintenance from the child's father in favour of the minor child, with the maternal grandmother named as next friend / guardian-and-litigation-representative.

The contesting party raised a preliminary objection. He contended that the maintenance petition under s. 125 CrPC was not maintainable at the instance of the maternal grandmother. The natural guardian — the mother — was, in his submission, the only person who could institute such a proceeding on behalf of the minor child. The institution of the petition by the grandmother, he argued, rendered the proceedings ab initio incompetent and liable to be terminated at the threshold.

The trial court and the appellate court took one view on the objection. The matter then came before the Punjab & Haryana High Court through criminal revisional jurisdiction. Justice Neerja K. Kalson — who had been sworn in as an Additional Judge of the Court on 8 January 2026 — heard the petition through May 2026 and delivered the order under discussion in late May 2026.

The legal question

The narrow legal question was whether a maternal grandmother in actual care and custody of a minor child has the locus to institute a maintenance petition under s. 125 CrPC on behalf of the child, where the parental relationship has broken down and the mother is not in a position to so institute. The broader doctrinal question was how the social-justice character of s. 125 CrPC, the de facto caregiver reality in many post-breakdown households, and the minor child's Article 21 welfare interests interlock to govern the question of locus.

The Court approached the question with three doctrinal anchors. The first was the long-standing line of Supreme Court authority on the social-justice character of s. 125 CrPC, with Bhuwan Mohan Singh v. Meena (2015) 6 SCC 353 as the most-cited modern statement. The second was the comprehensive maintenance-jurisprudence framework laid down in Rajnesh v. Neha (2021) 2 SCC 324, which has reshaped how trial courts approach maintenance proceedings across statutes. The third was the constitutional duty of the State as parens patriae under Article 21, particularly with respect to the welfare of minor children.

What the Court held

Section 125 CrPC's social-justice purpose centres the dependant

Justice Kalson held that s. 125 CrPC is a social-justice provision designed to prevent vagrancy and to provide effective and immediate relief to dependants. The doctrinal centre of the provision is the dependant's welfare, not procedural formalism around the identity of the person who institutes the petition. Where a minor child is the dependant, the controlling concern is whether the minor receives the maintenance to which she is entitled, not whether the petition is captioned in a particular way.

This framing draws directly on Bhuwan Mohan Singh v. Meena, in which the Supreme Court emphasised that s. 125 was inserted in the Code to provide a quick and effective remedy and to relieve the dependant from destitution. A reading of s. 125 that defeats the dependant's claim on the basis of an institutional formality would defeat the very object of the provision.

De facto caregiver doctrine recognised

The Court then articulated what may be called the de facto caregiver doctrine in the s. 125 CrPC context. Where the parental relationship has broken down and the maternal grandmother — or by extension, any close relative in actual care and custody of the minor — has assumed the role of primary caregiver, that person has sufficient representative capacity to institute the maintenance proceeding on the minor's behalf.

A maternal grandmother who is in actual care and custody of her granddaughter, and who is bearing the burden of her upbringing in circumstances where the parental relationship has broken down, has sufficient eligibility and entitlement to maintain proceedings under Section 125 Cr.P.C. on behalf of the minor child.

The Court grounded the recognition in the practical reality of post-breakdown households across India. In a substantial number of such households, the maternal grandmother is the de facto caregiver — providing the stability, emotional support and day-to-day care that the absent parental household cannot. The law cannot adopt a rigid stance that excludes such a de facto caregiver from invoking the maintenance jurisdiction, because the consequence would be to leave the minor child without recourse for the very maintenance that the statute promises.

The minor's statutory right cannot be frustrated by a technical objection

The Court framed the constitutional / doctrinal stakes in terms that go beyond the immediate case:

Beneath the technical objection of maintainability lies a deeper issue — whether a minor's statutory right to maintenance can be frustrated merely because the petition was not instituted by the mother. The answer must be in the negative.

The phrasing locates the question in the right register. A minor child's right to maintenance under s. 125 CrPC is a statutory right; once that right is engaged, the role of the procedural law is to give effect to it, not to defeat it on questions of caption. The Court's framing reflects the parens patriae dimension of Article 21, under which the State — including its courts — owes a duty to ensure that the legal rights of minor children are not lost in procedural formality.

Maintainability upheld; trial to proceed on its merits

On these holdings, the Court rejected the preliminary objection and confirmed that the maintenance petition was maintainable at the instance of the maternal grandmother. The matter was directed to proceed before the trial court on its merits, with the substantive question of the quantum of maintenance to be determined on the evidence in the usual course.

The Court did not rule on the merits of the maintenance claim itself — the quantum, the means of the contesting party, the needs of the minor, and the principles laid down in Rajnesh v. Neha for assessment of maintenance. Those remain matters for the trial court's adjudication once the proceedings resume.

The doctrinal architecture

The judgment makes a meaningful incremental contribution to the s. 125 CrPC corpus, principally through the explicit articulation of the de facto caregiver doctrine. The doctrine has been latent in earlier rulings — courts have repeatedly read s. 125 CrPC liberally in favour of dependants — but the Maternal Grandmother holding states it expressly in a context where the caregiver's locus had been directly contested.

Three doctrinal threads come together. The first is the social-justice character of s. 125 CrPC, articulated since Bhuwan Mohan Singh v. Meena (2015) and earlier in the Captain Ramesh Chander Kaushal v. Veena Kaushal line. The provision is designed to prevent destitution and to deliver quick, summary relief; the institutional caption is incidental to that purpose.

The second is the practical reality of caregiving in post-breakdown households. The judgment frames this not as an exceptional case but as a recurring pattern: maternal grandmothers across India are routinely the primary caregivers when the parental household collapses. A doctrine of locus that did not accommodate this reality would defeat s. 125's purpose in a structurally significant class of cases.

The third is the Article 21 parens patriae dimension. The State's duty to safeguard the welfare of minor children is not exhausted by substantive guarantees; it extends to ensuring that procedural law does not become an instrument for defeating those guarantees. The Court's framing of the question — "whether a minor's statutory right to maintenance can be frustrated merely because the petition was not instituted by the mother" — locates the issue squarely in this register.

The judgment also has portability into the new BNSS regime. Section 144 BNSS substantially reproduces the operative architecture of s. 125 CrPC, including the procedural pathway by which a maintenance petition is instituted on behalf of a minor. The de facto caregiver doctrine, anchored as it is in the social-justice purpose of the maintenance provision, carries unbroken into the BNSS regime. Trial courts and magistrates exercising s. 144 BNSS jurisdiction will apply the same logic.

The judgment sits productively alongside the Rajnesh v. Neha (2021) framework on maintenance assessment. Rajnesh governs the quantification of maintenance once the proceeding is on foot; the Maternal Grandmother discipline governs the threshold question of whether the proceeding can be on foot at the instance of a de facto caregiver. The two together constitute a more coherent maintenance architecture for the post-breakdown household context.

What the judgment did not decide

The judgment does not address the position of de facto caregivers other than the maternal grandmother — though the reasoning is clearly portable to other close relatives (paternal grandmother, sister, aunt) who similarly assume primary caregiving in post-breakdown households. The Court's framing — "a maternal grandmother who is in actual care and custody" — is illustrative on the facts rather than restrictive. Future cases will work out the applicability of the doctrine to other caregiver configurations.

The judgment also does not engage the distinct question of guardianship rights. Locus to institute a s. 125 CrPC maintenance proceeding on behalf of a minor is one question; guardianship over the minor under the Guardians and Wards Act 1890 or the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act 1956 is another. The de facto caregiver doctrine articulated here speaks to the former, not the latter; the law of guardianship continues to be governed by its own statutory and judicial architecture.

The Court further does not address the question of whether a similar de facto caregiver doctrine applies in proceedings under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act 1956, the Family Courts Act 1984, or the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005. The reasoning has cross-statutory implications, but the present holding is confined to the s. 125 CrPC / s. 144 BNSS context.

Nor does the judgment opine on the merits of the underlying maintenance claim — the quantum due, the means of the contesting party, the Rajnesh v. Neha affidavit-of-assets-and-liabilities discipline. Those are matters that the trial court will adjudicate now that the maintainability objection has been removed from the case.

After the judgment

The order has been cited in the days since its pronouncement as a fresh statement on a recurring issue. Trial courts and magistrates across the Punjab & Haryana jurisdiction will absorb the de facto caregiver framing in pending and future s. 125 CrPC / s. 144 BNSS proceedings. Where a maternal grandmother — or analogous caregiver — has instituted maintenance proceedings on behalf of a minor in a post-breakdown household, the maintainability objection that earlier might have stalled the proceedings at the threshold will now have to engage with the Maternal Grandmother doctrine.

The portability of the holding to other High Courts is significant. Delhi, Bombay, Karnataka, Madras and Calcutta High Courts each carry pending maintenance matters in which similar locus questions have surfaced. The clarity of the Punjab & Haryana ruling — particularly the framing of the "deeper issue" beneath the technical objection — gives it citational weight beyond its jurisdiction.

Bar associations and family-court practitioners are expected to develop standardised pleadings citing the holding as the operative authority for non-parent caregiver locus in maintenance matters. Counsel for contesting parties will need to recalibrate — preliminary objections to maintainability on the ground of who instituted the petition will now have to engage with the social-justice / de facto caregiver framework rather than relying on procedural formality alone.

Watch also for follow-on jurisprudence on the boundary between de facto caregiver status (recognised here for maintenance purposes) and adoptive or guardianship status (governed by a distinct statutory and judicial architecture). The two are doctrinally separable; the Maternal Grandmother judgment is careful not to blur the line.

The judgment also has implications for the BNSS transition. As trial courts increasingly try s. 144 BNSS maintenance proceedings — particularly those instituted after 1 July 2024 — the de facto caregiver doctrine articulated in the s. 125 CrPC context will carry across, ensuring that the social-justice purpose of the maintenance provision is preserved in the new procedural regime.

Related on Valkya

• BNSS one year on: a practitioner's read
• BNSS bail one year on: thresholds, conditions and Article 21
• Sajal Bose v. State of West Bengal: section 528 BNSS quashing discipline
• Allahabad HC on Kajal: BNSS s. 183 discretion and the magistrate's role

Sources

1. LiveLaw — "Maternal Grandmother Taking Care Of Child Can Maintain Minor's Plea Under Sec 125 CrPC: P&H High Court": https://www.livelaw.in/high-court/punjab-and-haryana-high-court/punjab-haryana-high-court-maternal-grandmother-taking-care-of-child-can-maintain-minors-plea-under-sec-125-crpc-533145
2. LiveLaw Hindi — Hindi-language version of the same coverage: https://hindi.livelaw.in/punjab-and-haryana-high-court/maternal-grandmother-taking-care-of-child-can-maintain-minors-plea-under-sec-125-crpc-ph-high-court-533147
3. LiveLaw — "Changing Dimensions Of Section 125 Of CrPC: Judicial Pronouncements On Maintenance To Family": https://www.livelaw.in/articles/judicial-pronouncement-maintenance-to-family-section-125-crpc-518350
4. Supreme Court of India — Bhuwan Mohan Singh v. Meena (2015) 6 SCC 353 case page: https://main.sci.gov.in/
5. Supreme Court Observer — Rajnesh v. Neha case page on maintenance jurisprudence: https://www.scobserver.in/cases/rajnesh-v-neha-maintenance-case-background/