On 12 May 2026, a two-judge bench expunged findings of cruelty and desertion against a dentist wife who had relocated from Kargil to Ahmedabad for tertiary medical care and to pursue her practice, holding that 'marriage does not eclipse her individuality' and retaining the divorce decree on the ground of irretrievable breakdown under Article 142.
Justice Neerja K. Kalson held that a maternal grandmother in actual care and custody of her granddaughter has sufficient eligibility to maintain a section 125 CrPC application on the minor's behalf where the parental relationship has broken down; the minor's statutory right to maintenance cannot be defeated by a technical objection to who instituted the petition.
On 28 September 2001, a five-judge Constitution Bench upheld the constitutional validity of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 — but read its principal provision as requiring the husband to make reasonable and fair provision for the maintenance of the divorced wife beyond the iddat period, including for her future. The judgment is the foundational doctrinal contribution that preserved the maintenance architecture of Shah Bano through interpretation of the 1986 Act, and supplies the doctrinal frame within which the more recent Mohd Abdul Samad v. State of Telangana operates.
On 10 July 2024, a two-judge bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Augustine George Masih held that a divorced Muslim woman is entitled to claim maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (now Section 144 of the BNSS, 2023) against her husband, and that the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 operates in addition to — not in derogation of — that secular maintenance right. The judgment is the most consequential restoration of the Shah Bano line in the post-1986 period.