The Supreme Court has dismissed former actor Anita Advani’s challenge to the rejection of her civil suit seeking a declaration that her alleged relationship with late Bollywood star Rajesh Khanna amounted to a marriage.
Justices M M Sundresh and Prasanna B Varale, hearing the matter on Thursday, declined to interfere with the Bombay High Court’s April 1 decision. The Bench characterised the case as “luxury litigation” and found no reason to entertain the petition.
Advani’s lawyer argued that the declaration sought in the civil proceedings was a matter of dignity for the petitioner. The submission, however, did not persuade the Court to examine the dispute further.
Legal Battle Over Relationship Status
The proceedings before the Supreme Court arose from a civil suit that Advani had pursued following Khanna’s death in July 2012.
Her request for a judicial declaration concerning the relationship was turned down by the Dindoshi sessions court in Mumbai in 2017. The Bombay High Court subsequently rejected her appeal against that decision on April 1.
Advani maintained that she and Khanna had shared a live-in relationship lasting several years. She also alleged that, in 2012, she was evicted from Khanna’s Mumbai residence, Aashirwad, by his estranged wife Dimple Kapadia, their daughter Twinkle Khanna and son-in-law Akshay Kumar.
Separate Domestic Violence Proceedings
Apart from seeking recognition of the alleged relationship, Advani had pursued remedies under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.
In a complaint lodged before a magistrate in 2013, she sought financial maintenance every month and a three-bedroom flat in Mumbai’s Bandra locality. The proceedings named Kapadia, her daughters and son-in-law.
Those proceedings ended in 2015 when the Bombay High Court allowed challenges brought by Kapadia and other family members and quashed the complaint.
The High Court found that the relationship claimed by Advani did not meet the legal description of a relationship in the nature of marriage, making the remedies she sought under the Domestic Violence Act unavailable.
It separately ruled that Khanna’s relatives could not be made parties to such proceedings merely because of their family connection, particularly when Advani had never shared a household with them.
Advani, whose acting credits include Saazish and Daasi, later continued her attempt to secure recognition of the alleged relationship through the civil litigation.
The Supreme Court’s refusal to consider her challenge leaves the Bombay High Court’s rejection of that claim intact.
