The Supreme Court held that the criminal offence of domestic cruelty extends to live-in relationships between consenting adults that qualify as "relationships in the nature of marriage". The question before it was whether a man in a live-in relationship could be prosecuted under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, now replaced by Sections 85 and 86 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The court said the provision should not be confined to married couples, since live-in relationships are a reality of modern urban life and a woman's marital status has no close link to the law's purpose of preventing cruelty within a household.