The Supreme Court on Thursday, 29 October 2026, refused to entertain a plea by former actor Anita Advani seeking judicial recognition of her relationship with the late actor Rajesh Khanna as one akin to marriage. A bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and Prasanna B. Varale found no grounds to admit the petition, dismissing it as 'luxury litigation'.

Background to the Legal Battle

Advani had filed the plea after the Bombay High Court dismissed her appeal against a trial court order that had earlier rejected her suit. Her original suit, instituted in 2015, named Dimple Kapadia, their daughters Twinkle Khanna and Rinke Khanna, and son-in-law Rajiv Bhatia as respondents. She had sought a declaration that she was in a marriage-like relationship with Khanna and was therefore his widow.

What the Bombay High Court Ruled

In its judgment delivered on 1 April, a single-judge bench of Justice Sharmila U. Deshmukh upheld the trial court's dismissal of the suit. The High Court held that the claim was barred by law because Khanna's marriage with Kapadia was still subsisting at the time. Citing the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal, Justice Deshmukh observed that a relationship can be recognised as one akin to marriage only if both parties were legally eligible to marry — which requires, among other conditions, that they be unmarried.

'The tests formulated by the Hon'ble Apex Court would indicate that the declaration of this nature seeks equivalence with marriage and marital relationship and must therefore also satisfy the essential tests for valid marriage although not formally married,' the High Court noted in its judgment.

Why Advani's Claim Did Not Satisfy Legal Tests

The High Court concluded that Advani's claim failed the essential threshold because Khanna's marriage with Kapadia had never been dissolved. The court also rejected her argument that a claim for recognition of the relationship could be considered independently of the wider widow declaration. It ruled that the 'distinction between monogamous or polygamous live-in relationship cannot exclude the satisfaction of the tests laid down in D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal.' The suit was rejected at the threshold under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC), meaning it was found legally untenable on its face before a full trial.

Advani's Contentions Before the Courts

Advani had argued that she and Khanna had lived together for several years, projected their relationship to society as marriage-like, shared a household, and celebrated festivals together. She maintained that these facts warranted a formal declaration of the relationship's nature, independent of the subsisting marriage question. Both the trial court and the High Court found these contentions insufficient to overcome the legal bar, and the Supreme Court's refusal to entertain the appeal has now conclusively closed that avenue.

Legal Significance of the Ruling

The case reaffirms the Supreme Court's D. Velusamy framework as a binding threshold for live-in relationship claims in India. Courts have consistently held that such relationships cannot be equated with marriage when a valid, subsisting marriage exists involving one of the parties. This is a significant marker for similar claims and sets a clear precedent for how courts will evaluate future petitions of this nature. The Supreme Court's characterisation of the petition as 'luxury litigation' also signals judicial impatience with claims that seek to relitigate settled legal questions at the highest level.