JUDGMENT

FATHIMA BEEVI, J. - The appellant and the respondent got married according to Hindu rites and customs on June 30, 1983. They lived together until the appellant started complaining of desertion and ill-treatment. She moved the court for maintenance by an application under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Though the claim was resisted on the ground that the appellant is not the legally wedded wife of the respondent who had earlier married one Veeramma, the learned Magistrate awarded a monthly maintenance of Rs. 400 holding that the first marriage has not been proved. The order was, however, set aside by the High Court in revision accepting the plea that the first marriage was subsisting when the respondent married the appellant.

2. We have granted special leave to appeal against the order of the High Court. We have been taken through the pleadings and the evidence by the learned counsel for the appellant for the purpose of satisfying that the High Court had no material before it for arriving at the finding that there was a valid marriage between Veeramma and the respondent on the day the respondent married the appellant. It is pointed out that the appellant had nowhere admitted the subsistence of a valid marriage which would render her marriage illegal. The appellant stated in her petition that one year after her marriage, she came to know that respondent married Veeramma and lived with her in Hyderabad and soon thereafter Veeramma started living along with the appellant and the respondent and, thus extra-marital relationship of the respondent with Veeramma has disrupted her family life. In fact, the respondent had in his counter flatly denied all the averments made by the appellant in the petition and maintained that a marriage ceremony was performed between Veeramma and the respondent when both were children and the appellant is only his kept-mistress. The respondent has, however, clearly admitted that he married the appellant according to Hindu rites. When that marriage repudiated as void on account of the subsistence of an earlier marriage, the respondent was bound to prove that he married Veeramma in the customary form and the marriage was subsisting in the year 1983 when the appellant was married to him. As rightly pointed out by the learned counsel for the appellant, there is no clear admission of an earlier marriage between the respondent and Veeramma to dispense with the proof of subsisting valid first marriage when the second marriage was solemnised. In the absence of such an admission, the statement that the respondent is living with another woman as husband and wife cannot persuade the court to hold that the marriage duly solemnised between the appellant and the respondent suffers from any legal infirmity. The High Court has referred to Exs. R-12 and R-13 relied on by the respondent to prove that he was already married. Ex. R-12 is the insurance policy issued on December 5, 1975 where the name of the nominee is shown as Veeramma indicating that she is the wife of the respondent. Ex. R-13 is the family identity card issued by the Road Transport Corporation where the respondent was working in 1977. These documents are issued on the basis of what the respondent himself had stated. The entries are not conclusive of the subsistence of a valid marriage between the respondent and Veeramma. If they had been living together as husband and wife even without performing a ceremonial marriage, and the respondent, represented that Veeramma was his wife, it is possible that such entries would come into existence. Therefore, these documents by themselves cannot prove any marriage or the subsistence of a valid marriage when the admitted with the appellant was solemnised.

3. Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is meant to achieve a social purpose. The object is to prevent vagrancy and destitution. It provides a speedy remedy for the supply of food, clothing and shelter to the deserted wife. When an att