Bengaluru, Nov. 30 -- The Karnataka high court has held that Indian Penal Code Section 498A, which punishes cruelty by a husband or his relatives, can apply even to "live-in relationships" and to "void or voidable marriages." In an order passed on November 18, justice Suraj Govindaraj ruled that the term "husband" is not just limited to a man in a legally valid marriage, but that it extends to anyone who enters a marriage-like relationship, or an arrangement that bears the attributes of marriage, including a live-in relationship. In such cases, one can be booked and tried under Section 498A, which is now replaced by Sections 85 and 86 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, "so long as the ingredients of cruelty are proved," the court said. "...the expression 'husband' in Section 498A IPC is not confined to a man in a legally valid marriage, but extends to one who enters into a marital relationship which is void or voidable, as also to a live-in relationship which bears the attributes of marriage, so long as the essential ingredients of cruelty as defined in the explanation to the section are satisfied," the high court said. The court made the observations while hearing a petition filed by a man seeking quashing of a case registered against him on his second wife's complaint. According to the complaint, the petitioner already had a subsisting marriage with a woman, with whom he also had a daughter. Despite this, he married another woman in 2010. His second relationship ended in 2016 and the second wife filed a complaint initiating proceedings under IPC Section 498A, alleging cruelty, demands for dowry, and physical violence....