10.5 Bigamy (Dui Bihe)

Definition: marrying again while the first spouse is alive and the first marriage subsists — the monogamy rule's breach. The elements: A valid prior marriage (the first marriage must subsist — the void-ab-initio first marriage's paradox: the "bigamist" whose first marriage never existed); A second marriage ceremony/registration while the first subsists (the unregistered-ritual marriage's sufficiency for criminality — the courts recognizing the socially-performed marriage though unregistered); Knowledge of the first marriage's subsistence (the mistake-of-fact defence: the spouse reasonably believed dead or divorced). The statutory exceptions: the first marriage's dissolution (divorce/death); the first spouse's whereabouts unknown for the statutory period (the deserted spouse's statutory release — the "not heard of" exception); the first marriage's judicial nullity. The gendered history: the Ain-era polygamy's asymmetry (the husband's conditional second marriage once permitted; the wife's never) abolished in the reform era — the Code's equal monogamy; the bigamy prosecution's sociology (the second-family cases, the deserted-first-wife complaints, the property-and- maintenance drivers behind the charges). The leading case: Idris Miya v. HMG, NKP (2044 B.S.), No. 2, p. 259 — the bigamy case (also teaching personal jurisdiction — the court's reach over the Nepali offender). Exam Focus Long questions: (i) Rape — the definition, the consent doctrine (the vitiating catalogue), the statutory-incapacity heads, the aggravation ladder, the marital-rape recognition, the proof question (Janak Tripathi); (ii) Sexual…