Shahjahan vs State Of Uttar Pradesh 2025 INSC 528 - S.125 CrPC - Date Of Awarding Maintenance - Sharia Court

Code of Criminal Procedure 1973- Section 125- Section 125 of the Code is a beneficial piece of legislation which has been enacted to protect the wife and children from destitution and vagrancy and, in the usual course, it would not be appropriate to disadvantage the applicant for the delay in the disposal of the application by the judicial system- Maintenance be awarded from the date on which the application was made before the court concerned. The right to claim maintenance must date back to the date of filing the application, since the period during which the maintenance proceedings remained pending is not within the control of the applicant- Rajnesh v Neha, (2021) 2 SCC 324. (Para 17-18)

Family Court- Family Court will do well, henceforth, to bear in mind the observation in Nagarathinam v State, that the ‘…Court is not an institution to sermonise society on morality and ethics ...’.(Para 14)

Sharia Court - ‘Court of Kazi’, ‘Court of (Darul Kaja) Kajiyat’, ‘Sharia Court’ etcetera by whatever name styled have no recognition in law. As noted in Vishwa Lochan Madan (supra), any declaration/decision by such bodies, by whatever name labelled, is not binding on anyone and is unenforceable by resort to any coercive measure. The only way such declaration/decision can withstand scrutiny in the eye of law could be when the affected parties accept such declaration/decision by acting thereon or accepting it and when such action does not conflict with any other law. Even then, such declaration/decision, at best, would only be valid inter-se the parties that choose to act upon/accept the same, and not a third-party. (Para 23) - Referred to Vishwa Lochan Madan v Union of India, (2014) 7 SCC 70