Question

Mr. A, a 40-year old male Hindu, was married to Ms. B, a 36-year old female Hindu. Mr. A fell in love with his colleague- Ms. C, a 22-year old female Christian. On April 8, 2020, Mr. A declared Ms. C as his wife in front of all his colleagues, family members and relatives. Based on the given facts, decide the liability of Mr. A as per Hindu law.

• A. Mr. A is not liable for the offence of bigamy as Ms. C is a Christian
• B. Mr. A is liable for the offence of bigamy as mere declaration also amounts to solemnisation.
• C. Mr. A is not liable for the offence of bigamy as he has not solemnised his marriage with Ms. C.
• D. Mr. A is liable for the offence of bigamy as there was no intention to marry.
• A. Solemnisation means celebrating the marriage with proper customary rites and ceremonies of either party to a marriage
• B. Solemnisation includes and means promising each other a lifetime of happiness
• C. Solemnisation is not necessary in modern marriages when registration of marriage is complete
• D. Solemnisation is a mere formal practice and not a mandate
• A. Monogamy is a union of a man and woman which provides their relation a social and legal recognition
• B. Monogamy as a law was abolished after 1955.
• C. The second marriage during the subsistence of a first valid marriage is void
• D. If a husband solemnises a second marriage during the subsistence of first marriage,it is not an offence, however, it is an offence if a wife commits the same act.
• A. The object of the Section was to provide an opportunity to the wife in the form of remedy of divorce
• B. The introduction of this ground of divorce is unnecessary as it disturbs the sanctity of marital institution.
• C. A remedy is only available under this Section if the husband has the other wife living.
• D. The living status of either spouse is immaterial to claim the remedy.
• A. Yes, Ms. Q can file a complaint subject to the approval by Ms. N.
• B. No, Ms. Q cannot file a complaint as it defeats the very purpose of her marriage with Mr. P.
• C. No, Ms. Q cannot file a complaint as Mr. P converted to another religion and the offence of bigamy will only be attracted when the parties are Hindus
• D. Yes, Ms. Q has the remedy of filing a complaint for the offence of bigamy.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

The correct Answer is (C):Mr. A is not liable for the offence of bigamy as he has not solemnised his marriage with Ms. C.

Answer 2

The facts say Mr. A declared Ms. C as his wife in front of colleagues, family and relatives, but nothing in the facts describes any actual ceremony or rite being performed. That gap is exactly what the Lokhande principle turns on.

1. Option A (not liable because Ms. C is a Christian): This picks the wrong reason. Ms. C's religion does not, by itself, decide whether Mr. A committed bigamy under Hindu law; what matters is whether a valid marriage was solemnised between them at all.
2. Option B (liable, because mere declaration amounts to solemnisation): This is exactly what the Supreme Court rejected in Bhaurao Shankar Lokhande. A public declaration or announcement is not the same as performing the customary rites and ceremonies that solemnisation requires, so declaring someone a wife in front of others does not, on its own, create a solemnised marriage.
3. Option C (not liable, as he has not solemnised his marriage with Ms. C): This applies the correct test. Since Section 494 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 only punishes bigamy where the later marriage was validly solemnised, and nothing here shows any actual rites or ceremonies were performed, Mr. A cannot be said to have married Ms. C in the sense the offence requires.
4. Option D (liable, because there was no intention to marry): This gets the logic backwards. A lack of intention to marry would, if anything, support saying there was no marriage, but the reasoning here does not depend on intention at all, it depends on the absence of solemnisation, which is a question of whether the required ceremony took place, not what Mr. A privately intended.

Without an actual solemnisation, however sincere or public the declaration, there is no marriage in the legal sense, and therefore no bigamy under Section 494.

So the correct answer is (C): Mr. A is not liable for the offence of bigamy as he has not solemnised his marriage with Ms. C.

Answer 3

The correct Answer is (A):Solemnisation means celebrating the marriage with proper customary rites and ceremonies of either party to a marriage

Answer 4

The word "solemnise" is doing a lot of legal work in this area, since whether a marriage is solemnised decides whether Section 494 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 can apply at all. The passage and the Lokhande case both use the word in a specific, narrow sense.

1. Option A (celebrating the marriage with proper customary rites and ceremonies): This is the sense the courts actually use. Solemnisation means performing whatever rites and ceremonies are required under the personal law that applies to the parties, which is what turns a private union into a legally recognised marriage.
2. Option B (promising each other a lifetime of happiness): This describes an emotional or sentimental commitment, not a legal act. A promise of this kind, without the required ceremonies, does not solemnise a marriage in the sense Section 494 requires.
3. Option C (not necessary in modern marriages once registration is complete): This reverses how registration and solemnisation relate to each other. Registration records that a marriage took place, it does not substitute for the ceremonies that solemnise the marriage in the first place, and the Lokhande line of cases treats solemnisation, not registration, as the operative requirement.
4. Option D (a mere formal practice, not a mandate): This understates its legal importance. Far from being optional, solemnisation is precisely what the Supreme Court in Lokhande said was necessary before a marriage, and therefore an offence of bigamy, can exist in law.

Solemnisation is the concrete, ceremonial act that gives a marriage legal existence, which is why the courts treat it as essential rather than as sentiment, paperwork, or an optional formality.

So the correct answer is (A): Solemnisation means celebrating the marriage with proper customary rites and ceremonies of either party to a marriage.

Answer 5

The correct Answer is (B):Monogamy as a law was abolished after 1955.

Answer 6

This question asks which statement about monogamy under Hindu law is wrong, and the passage is specific about what the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 actually did to the law of monogamy, which makes one option easy to spot as reversed.

1. Option A (monogamy is a union between a man and woman with social and legal recognition): This matches the passage's description of monogamy as the voluntary union for life of one man with one woman to the exclusion of all others, a description carrying both social and legal weight. This statement is accurate.
2. Option B (monogamy as a law was abolished after 1955): This is the reverse of what happened. The passage says the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 introduced monogamy as a law of marriage among Hindus, meaning 1955 is when the rule came into force, not when it was done away with. This statement is not correct.
3. Option C (a second marriage during the subsistence of the first valid marriage is void): This matches the passage directly, which says that if a party already has a living spouse at the time of a later marriage, that later marriage is no marriage at all. This statement is accurate.
4. Option D (it is not an offence for a husband to solemnise a second marriage during the first, but it is an offence for a wife to do the same): Both spouses are held to the same monogamy requirement under Section 5 clause (i), and Section 494 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 punishes bigamy regardless of which spouse commits it, so this statement is also difficult to square with the passage; but among the four, B is the clearest and most direct reversal of what the passage states about 1955.

The Act of 1955 is the point at which monogamy became the legal rule for Hindus, so describing it as the point of abolition gets the history exactly backwards.

So the correct answer is (B): Monogamy as a law was abolished after 1955.

Answer 7

The correct Answer is (B):The introduction of this ground of divorce is unnecessary as it disturbs the sanctity of marital institution.

Answer 8

Three of these four options describe what Section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 actually provides, while one of them is simply an opinion about whether the provision should exist, which is a different kind of statement altogether.

1. Option A (the object was to give the wife a remedy in the form of divorce): This tracks the passage, which describes Section 13(2) as giving the wife a specific ground to petition for divorce where the husband had remarried, or already had another wife living, before the Act commenced. This describes the remedy accurately.
2. Option B (introducing this ground was unnecessary and disturbs the sanctity of marriage): This is a policy opinion about whether the ground should exist, not a description of what the remedy actually is or how it operates. Since the question asks which statement does not relate to the remedy, a value judgment about the wisdom of the provision is exactly the kind of statement that does not describe the remedy itself.
3. Option C (the remedy is only available if the husband has the other wife living): This matches the passage's proviso, that the other wife must be alive at the time the wife presents her petition, for the remedy under Section 13(2) to be available. This describes the remedy accurately.
4. Option D (the living status of either spouse is immaterial to claim the remedy): Read together with the passage's proviso about the other wife's survival being a condition for the remedy, this statement is at least closely tied to the same subject, it is still a statement about the mechanics of the remedy rather than an opinion about its desirability.

A, C and D are all attempts to describe features of the remedy itself, while B steps outside that and argues a policy position about whether the ground should exist at all, which is why B is the one that does not relate to the remedy.

So the correct answer is (B): The introduction of this ground of divorce is unnecessary as it disturbs the sanctity of marital institution.

Answer 9

The correct Answer is (D):Yes, Ms. Q has the remedy of filing a complaint for the offence of bigamy.

Answer 10

The trick in this fact pattern is the conversion. Mr. P does not divorce Ms. Q, he simply converts to Islam and then goes through a second marriage with Ms. N. The question is whether that conversion lets him escape the bigamy rule that would otherwise apply to a Hindu husband.

1. Option A (yes, subject to Ms. N's approval): This makes no legal sense here. Whether Ms. Q can complain of bigamy does not depend on Ms. N consenting to anything; Ms. N is not the person whose remedy is in question.
2. Option B (no, because it defeats the purpose of her own marriage): This is not a recognised legal reason to deny the remedy, and it does not track how courts have actually approached this exact situation, where the concern is protecting the first, still subsisting marriage rather than some abstract idea of what the wife's marriage was for.
3. Option C (no, because Mr. P converted and bigamy only applies to Hindus): This is the trap the fact pattern is built around, and it does not hold. A Hindu marriage solemnised under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 does not automatically dissolve merely because one spouse later converts to another religion. Since Ms. Q's marriage to Mr. P continues to subsist in law, Mr. P marrying Ms. N while that first marriage still exists amounts to bigamy under Section 494 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, regardless of what religion governs the second marriage.
4. Option D (yes, Ms. Q has the remedy of filing a complaint for bigamy): This follows from the point above. Because conversion alone does not dissolve the first marriage, Mr. P's second marriage during its subsistence is a bigamous marriage, and Ms. Q, as the wronged spouse of the still-subsisting first marriage, can bring a complaint.

A conversion to another religion does not, by itself, end an existing Hindu marriage, so a second marriage contracted after that conversion, while the first marriage still stands, remains bigamy in the eyes of the law.

So the correct answer is (D): Yes, Ms. Q has the remedy of filing a complaint for the offence of bigamy.