New Delhi, Feb. 7 -- The Supreme Court has directed a man to pay maintenance to his estranged wife, despite her previous marriage being legally subsisting, emphasising that a strict legal interpretation should not be allowed to defeat the humanitarian purpose of the provision that seeks to protect women from destitution.

In a significant ruling reinforcing the social justice objective of maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), a bench comprising justices BV Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma highlighted that the objective of maintenance provisions should not be thwarted solely due to the absence of a formal divorce decree when other facts support the woman's version.

"When the social justice objective o...