The Telangana High Court recently delivered a significant judgment affirming a government employee’s widow’s entitlement to a family pension, unequivocally stating that the burden of proving bigamy lies squarely with the State, which it failed to discharge.
The case involved a woman whose pension application was rejected by the state authorities on the grounds that her marriage to the deceased employee was invalid due to him allegedly contracting a prior, subsisting marriage (bigamy). The State’s argument implied that since a second marriage, while the first spouse is alive, is generally illegal under the relevant personal law and service rules, the petitioner was ineligible for the family pension and associated death benefits.
However, the High Court focused on the principle of presumption of marriage based on the couple’s sustained relationship. The Court observed that the employee and the petitioner had lived together as husband and wife for over 45 years and had borne three children, a long period of cohabitation which, in law, strongly creates a presumption in favour of a valid marriage and against mere concubinage.
The bench emphasized that for the State to deny the benefits, it needed to produce concrete, irrefutable evidence proving the existence of the first marriage and its legal validity at the time the petitioner was married. Since the State could not present sufficient evidence to counter the strong presumption arising from the decades-long relationship, the Court ultimately ruled in favour of the widow.
This ruling reinforces the judicial commitment to social justice and the protection of long-term dependents, establishing that technical objections cannot override the humanitarian and legal weight of a prolonged, accepted spousal relationship, especially when the deceased government servant had also listed the claimant and her children as family members in his service records.
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