A 28 year old man and the two women he married and fathered children with -- neither knew of the other -- have arrived at an unusual agreement that will allow the menage a trois to continue: he will divide his assets and time between the two families, spending the first three days of the week with one wife, the next three days with another, and have Sunday to himself.
According to the agreement ( a copy has been reviewed by HT) that came about after a Gwalior family court appointed a counsellor to broker a deal, the software engineer from Noida will split his 1.5 lakh a month salary between his two wives. He owns two flats, and each wife gets one. He will spend Monday to Wednesday with one wife, and Thursday to Saturday with the other. On Sunday , “he is not bound to live with either” and has the freedom to live anywhere. In case he violates this agreement, the first wife will be able to move court against the man, the agreement stated.
To be sure, bigamy is a crime in India (with some exceptions), although agreements such as the one arrived at by the trio prevent people from being punished for it.
Advocate Harish Dewan, the counsellor appointed by the Gwalior Family Court in January 2023 to resolve the dispute amicably said that the man married a 26-year-old woman in May 2018. They were both software engineers who worked at a company in Gurgaon. In 2020, the woman became pregnant, and with the pandemic raging, he dropped her off at her parents’ house in Gwalior. “Due to Covid 19, movement was restricted and the man asked the woman to stay with her family,” Dewan said.
{{/usCountry}}Advocate Harish Dewan, the counsellor appointed by the Gwalior Family Court in January 2023 to resolve the dispute amicably said that the man married a 26-year-old woman in May 2018. They were both software engineers who worked at a company in Gurgaon. In 2020, the woman became pregnant, and with the pandemic raging, he dropped her off at her parents’ house in Gwalior. “Due to Covid 19, movement was restricted and the man asked the woman to stay with her family,” Dewan said.
{{/usCountry}}He returned to Gurgaon, never went back to Gwalior and in 2021, married another woman who worked in the same company, after she too became pregnant with his child after a relationship. “The second wife gave birth to a baby girl in July 2021. All this time, his first wife wanted him to return, but he began to avoid her,” Dewan said.
In January 2023, the family of his first wife travelled to Noida to confront him, and found that he was living with another wife with whom he had a child. They filed a complaint at the local police station in Noida after an altercation but no FIR was lodged.
That same month, the first wife filed a case before the family court in Gwalior for alimony; the court asked advocate and counsellor Harish Dewan to attempt to reach a compromise before hearing of the case on Tuesday.
Dewan said, “Being a counselor, the first attempt is to resolve the issue. The first wife wanted security for her baby, and did not necessarily want to send her husband to jail. The second wife was ready to live with the first, but the man himself did not want to live with the first.”
Dewan said he explained to the man that while the implementation of the law is still a grey area, bigamy is illegal under section 494 of the Indian Penal Code. “The man then agreed to divide everything between the two wives,” the counsellor said.
HT reached out to the first wife of the man who said, “I am ready to live according to the agreement prepared by the counsellor.”
The man and his second wife could not be reached for a comment.
“Though it is not legal according to the Hindu Marriage Act and the IPC, the three can live according to the terms of the contract with mutual understanding. If the contract is violated, the first wife can move court,” Dewan said.
Legal experts said cases such as this are not unusual in India, even if the solution that has been arrived at is, and that while there is illegality in the man’s actions, no case for action against him is made out until there is a challenge to the validity of the agreement. Former Madhya Pradesh advocate general Ravinandan Singh said: “If three people want to live together with such a mutual understanding, as long as it is not contested by the three parties, it is fine.”