The Allahabad High Court has observed that a husband cannot merely rely on social media messages to establish that his wife is continuously living in adultery without corroborative evidence of physical intimacy or cohabitation.
The observation was made by Justice Jai Krishna Upadhyay who was dealing with a husband's petition challenging the grant of maintenance to his wife by the family court of Sambhal at Chandausi on October 1, 2025.
The husband's plea was that his wife was not entitled to any maintenance as she is living in adultery. In this regard, he placed reliance on printouts of Instagram chats alleged to have taken place between her and an advocate with whom she is allegedly in an adulterous relationship.
"Even if, for the sake of argument, the contents of the unverified chats were to be perused, mere text messages on a social media platform without corroborative evidence of physical intimacy or cohabitation are thoroughly insufficient to legally establish that the wife is continuously living in adultery," the court said.
In this backdrop, the court explained that living in adultery -- a ground for denying maintenance to a wife under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) or now Section 144 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) -- denotes a continuous, ongoing and habitual course of adulterous conduct.
"It does not encompass a single, fleeting lapse, nor can it be inferred from mere conversational interactions, professional associations or unsubstantiated suspicions. For a husband to successfully non-suit a wife's claim for maintenance at the threshold, he must present clear and cogent evidence," the court further added.
"After going through the entire facts and record the high court said that the husband has to prove a continuous adulterous lifestyle of his wife to deny maintenance to her. Instagram chats were not sufficient to establish the alleged adultery," the court said.
The court also observed that electronic evidence requires strict verification in accordance with Section 65-B of the Indian Evidence Act due to the inherent vulnerabilities of digital data. In the present case, it said, the husband had not produced the mandatory statutory certification.
After finding that the messages exchanged on Instagram were not sufficient to establish the accusation of living in adultery, the high court in its judgment dated September 29 dismissed the husband's challenge against a family court order directing him to pay maintenance to his wife.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
