Was never married to Karuna Sharma, maintains Dhananjay Munde, seeks quashing of maintenance order

MUMBAI: Maharashtra’s food and civil supplies minister Dhananjay Munde has approached a sessions court seeking to quash a metropolitan magistrate court’s order directing him to pay an interim monthly maintenance of ₹2 lakh to his estranged first wife, Karuna Sharma, and their daughter, Shivani Munde.

In his plea, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader has maintained that he was never married to Sharma, due to which the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence (DV) Act, 2005, was not applicable to the case. He also claimed that he is only legally married to Rajshri Munde, as per Hindu rites, since 2001.

Sharma, who had approached the court in 2022 invoking provisions of the DV Act, claiming she had been subjected to physical and emotional abuse during their marriage, sought time to file a reply to the appeal. During Monday’s hearing, before additional sessions judge Shaikh Akbar Shaikh Jafar, Sharma submitted that she would not apply for the execution of the interim maintenance order passed by the magistrate court till the next date of the hearing, March 21.

On February 4, the magistrate court in Bandra had partly allowed Sharma’s plea seeking monthly maintenance under the DV Act. She had sought a monthly maintenance amount of ₹5 lakh each for herself and her two children, Seeshiv and Shivani, and ₹25 crore as compensation.

Metropolitan magistrate AB Jadhav partially allowed her plea, observing that the NCP leader’s denial of a marital relationship and refusal of conjugal rights itself amounted to emotional abuse, and, therefore, Sharma was entitled to monthly maintenance.

Munde has always denied that he had married Sharma and that he had physically and emotionally abused her. In his appeal before the sessions court, he stated that he is married to Rajshri Munde and has lived with her and their children since 2001.

The Maharashtra minister alleged that Sharma got into a relationship with him despite being aware of his marriage, adding that their relationship ended in November 2020. He claimed that he was introduced to Sharma during his visits to Mumbai for work, and their two children were born in 2005 and 2006. He added that he “permitted his name and surname to be used for the official documentation of the children alone”.

After he was inducted into the state cabinet, Sharma began making repeated demands for large sums of money by falsely representing herself as his wife, the appeal stated. The appeal was filed through advocate Sayali Sawant, which maintained that “mere denial of conjugal rights does not, by itself, constitute emotional abuse.”

“For the application under the DV Act, it must be proved that the parties were sharing a common household,” it said, adding that Sharma did not bring anything on record to prove that the marriage was performed in accordance with Hindu rites and claimed that the documents she had produced before the court were false.

Munde claimed that he and Sharma had never lived in a shared household. He added that Sharma “made vague, unsubstantiated and baseless claims of marriage” and that they maintained a cordial relationship for the sake of their children.

The appeal stated that the metropolitan magistrate failed to consider that she is an insurance agent, is involved in the real estate sector and owns property in Mumbai and Indore, which shows that she is financially stable, independent, and well-established.

As per Sharma’s submission before the Bandra court, she and Munde got married in January 1999, following which they lived in Indore and eventually moved to Mumbai. She said that Munde refused to take her to his native place in the Beed district, claiming that the relationship was not acceptable to his family. She also claimed that supporters of the NCP leader attacked her when she tried to go to his native place in November 2020.