Family Law

P. Venkataramana v. State

AIR 1977 AP 43

Facts

The Full Bench considered connected criminal proceedings involving Hindu marriages solemnised when one or both spouses were below the minimum ages prescribed by Section 5(iii) HMA.
In one matter, convictions for bigamy were challenged.
In another, a husband sought to quash bigamy proceedings by arguing that his first marriage was void because, at the time of that marriage, he was about thirteen and the wife about nine.
He claimed that, since the first marriage was void from the beginning, his later marriage could not amount to bigamy.
An earlier Andhra Pradesh decision had treated an underage Hindu marriage as void.
The Full Bench was asked to determine whether that view correctly interpreted Sections 5, 11, 12 and 18 HMA.

Whether a Hindu marriage solemnised in violation of the minimum-age condition under Section 5(iii) was void ab initio.
Whether such an underage marriage could constitute a subsisting first marriage for bigamy proceedings.

Section 5 lays down several conditions for a Hindu marriage.
However, every violation of Section 5 does not produce the same consequence.
Section 11 expressly declares marriages void only for contravention of Sections:
5(i): living spouse;
5(iv): prohibited relationship; and
5(v): sapinda relationship.
The age condition in Section 5(iii) is not included in Section 11.
It was also not a ground of voidability under Section 12.
The statutory consequence of violating the age requirement was punishment under Section 18.
Following the 1976 amendment, Section 13(2)(iv) also gave a wife married before fifteen an option to repudiate the marriage within the prescribed age.
Courts cannot add invalidity where the legislature deliberately prescribed different consequences.

The Court compared the language of Sections 5, 11, 12 and 18.
If every condition under Section 5 were a condition precedent to the existence of marriage, Section 11’s express reference to only three clauses would become meaningless.
Parliament had consciously selected which contraventions made a marriage void.
The omission of Section 5(iii) from Section 11 therefore had to be respected.
The Court also referred to the earlier Hindu-law position that minority did not itself prevent solemnisation of marriage because Hindu marriage was traditionally treated as a sacrament rather than an ordinary contract.
The Child Marriage Restraint Act punished those responsible for child marriage but did not invalidate the marriage itself.
The Hindu Marriage Act continued this distinction by imposing punishment without declaring the union void.
The 1976 insertion of Section 13(2)(iv) further confirmed the conclusion.
If an underage marriage were already void, there would have been no need to give the wife a statutory option to repudiate and obtain divorce.
The husband could therefore not treat his first marriage as nonexistent merely because both parties had been children.
Since the first marriage remained legally subsisting, the criminal complaint alleging a subsequent marriage could not be quashed on that ground.

The Full Bench held that violation of Section 5(iii) did not make a Hindu marriage void or voidable under the HMA as it then stood.
The consequences were statutory punishment and, after 1976, the wife’s limited right of repudiation.
The request to quash the bigamy complaint was rejected.
Use this case for: under the pre-PCMA position, breach of the HMA age condition did not by itself invalidate the marriage.