Woman claiming to be MP’s wife moves SC

Challenges order directing her to live separately

JD(U) Rajya Sabha MP Mahendra Prasad, popularly known as “King Mahendra”, has found himself in a peculiar legal tangle wherein a woman has knocked at the doors of the Supreme Court seeking to live with him claiming to be his legally wedded wife.

The woman, who has been residing with 79year-old seven-time parliamentarian from Bihar for the last 45 years, has challenged the Delhi high court order directing her to live separately from King Mahindra, one of the richest MPs in India, for a period of four weeks.

The ‘disowned’ son of the MP had moved the high court and claimed that his father, along with the woman, had illegally confined his mother who is Prasad's actual wife.

The high court had asked the woman to stay away from Mr Prasad, who has several pharmaceutical companies and other businesses, till the conclusion of investigation into the allegations that she had illegally confined the legally wedded wife of the parliamentarian.

The case came up for hearing on Tuesday before an apex court bench headed by Justice R. Banumathi where senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the woman, said that the high court has followed a "completely illegal procedure" in the case and even the MP want to live with her.

Claiming that the woman is the “legally wedded wife” of Mr Prasad, Mr Rohatgi said,

“Why should and wife the live husband separately? There is democracy in the country”.

Terming it a “peculiar case”, he questioned the probe being conducted in the matter and said that high court ought not to have passed such order as it was dealing with a habeas corpus (a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a court) petition filed by the MP's son. “You (petitioner) have obviously lived as husband and wife for a long time but thatdoes not mean that you are husband and wife,” the bench, told Mr Rohatgi.