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 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.
On 23 April 1985, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Y.V. Chandrachud held that Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure — the secular maintenance framework — applies to Muslim women, and that the right to maintenance does not end with the iddat period where the divorced wife is unable to support herself. The judgment's substantive disposition was reversed by the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986; the constitutional architecture it articulated, however, has continued to govern subsequent engagement with the question. A digest of the holding, the reasoning, and the doctrinal trajectory.