Introduction

On the same corridor of the same court, within weeks of each other, two families walked in with strikingly similar stories and walked out with starkly opposite answers. Both involved a man who had died. Both involved the widow he left behind. Both involved questions of who owed whom a duty of financial support. And in both, the Allahabad High Court gave a clear, principled response — only the direction of that response was entirely different.

Read together, Rakesh Kumar v. State of U.P. (February 4, 2026) and Akul Rastogi v. Shubhangi Rastogi (March 17, 2026) are not simply two maintenance cases. They are a mirror held up to the architecture of Indian family law — revealing what it protects, what it leaves exposed, and the curious asymmetry at its heart.

The Two Stories

In Agra, Rakesh Kumar and his wife were aged, illiterate, and financially destroyed. Their only son, Pravesh Kumar, had married a woman in 2016 and died in 2021, leaving behind no estate worth speaking of. The widow, however, had not been left destitute — she was a serving Constable in the Uttar Pradesh Police, drawing a government salary. By the parents’ account, she had also received her husband’s retiral and service benefits. The parents approached the Family Court seeking maintenance from her. They were rejected. They came to the High Court. They were rejected again.

In Lucknow — handled by a Division Bench — Akul Rastogi sought to prosecute his wife, Shubhangi Rastogi, for perjury, alleging she had concealed her employment and assets worth over ₹20 lakhs in fixed deposits while claiming maintenance. The Family Court had refused him leave to prosecute. He appealed. The High Court dismissed the appeal at the threshold itself — and in doing so, made a sweeping observation: that a husband’s duty to maintain his wife does not end with his death, extending in law to a widow’s claim against her father-in-law.

Head-on Contrast

The contrast is not a contradiction. Both courts are legally correct within the framework they applied. But placed side by side, the two decisions produce an asymmetry so sharp it demands examination.

The Legal Architecture Behind the Asymmetry

The BNSS framework: a closed list, strictly construed

Section 144 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 — the successor to the much-litigated Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure — is a social welfare provision offering a swift, summary remedy for maintenance. But it is a provision of enumerated rights, not general equitable principles. The persons entitled to claim under it are precisely listed.

Justice Madan Pal Singh applied a rule of statutory interpretation as old as the common law: when a legislature enumerates a list, it excludes what it does not include. The omission of parents-in-law is not a gap; it is a choice. Moral obligation, however overwhelming the facts, cannot be converted into a legal one by judicial fiat in summary proceedings.

“The concept of moral obligation, howsoever compelling it may appear, cannot be enforced as a legal obligation in the absence of a statutory mandate.”

— Justice Madan Pal Singh, Allahabad HC, CRLR No. 6502 of 2025

The HAMA framework: a moral obligation given legal form

The Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956 operates on an entirely different philosophy. It codifies ancient obligations of the joint Hindu family into enforceable legal duties — and crucially, it extends those duties beyond death. Section 19 of HAMA requires a father-in-law to maintain a widowed daughter-in-law where she cannot maintain herself from her own property, her deceased husband’s estate, or the resources of her children or parents.

The Division Bench in Akul Rastogi did not need to adjudicate this directly — the case before it concerned perjury, not a widow’s maintenance claim. But in articulating the legal backdrop, Justice Arindam Sinha stated the principle plainly: the husband’s maintenance obligation survives him, transforming into the father-in-law’s liability towards the widow. The duty does not die with the man.

The Irony the Law Produces

Here is what the two judgments, read together, permit: a daughter-in-law who is a government employee and has received her late husband’s retiral benefits can face a legal obligation to be maintained by her father-in-law under HAMA if she falls on hard times — while simultaneously facing no obligation whatsoever to maintain those very in-laws, no matter how destitute they are, under the BNSS.

This is not hypocrisy on the part of either court. Both decisions are legally sound. The HAMA obligation on in-laws is a codified duty, expressed in statute, constrained by conditions. The BNSS obligation on daughters-in-law simply does not exist. The legislature created one and not the other.

Critical Analysis

The Legislature’s Unfinished Business

The BNSS 2023 was presented as a modernisation of India’s criminal procedure. Section 144 was one provision where the opportunity to revisit was greatest. It was not taken. The categories of persons eligible for maintenance remain substantively identical to those under the old Section 125 Cr.P.C. — language drafted in the 1970s, speaking to a joint-family India that has largely dissolved.

In a country where sons are dying young, nuclear families are the norm, and the death of a child may leave both aged parents and a young widow in financial peril, a statute that ignores the obligations owed by those who have substantially benefited from the deceased’s estate is incomplete — and arguably unjust. Many jurisdictions have extended elder care obligations to those who inherit from a deceased family member. India has not.

Until Parliament acts, courts will continue to do what Justice Madan Pal Singh did: apply the law faithfully, even when the result is hard. That is not a failure of the judiciary. It is a failure of the legislature.

Conclusion: One Court, Two Truths

There is no contradiction between these two judgments. The Allahabad High Court did not say different things on the same question. It said the same thing — follow the statute — and arrived at different results because the statutes point in different directions.

But that is precisely what makes the juxtaposition powerful. Law is a patchwork of provisions enacted at different times, by different parliaments, under different pressures — and it produces results that, in combination, can look like a paradox. A court that tells a widow her father-in-law may owe her maintenance is the same court that tells her father-in-law he is owed nothing in return. The family is asymmetrically bound.

Whether that asymmetry is just is a question for lawmakers. Whether it is law — as both these benches confirm — is no longer a question at all.