Everything was fine, until the real wife who was at home all this time, found out.

The woman, a teacher in a private school in Delhi, could find out only a few months later that her husband had successfully managed to sneak out of their marriage by putting up before the law an impostor of a wife.

The records of the alleged divorce case further disclosed that said petition was filed by both the parties through a common advocate who she failed to track down. She was also shocked to learn that her husband managed to make a woman show up in the court for ascertaining the consent as his wife and sign the decree of divorce too.

Deciding to fight it out, the woman filed a petition in the Delhi High Court and claimed she was not at all aware of the divorce proceedings and that the husband fraudulently made somebody impersonate as his wife to obtain the divorce decree. Her plea contended she never appeared before the trial court nor filed any divorce petition by mutual consent and also did not engage any advocate. The HC asked her to move the trial court and seek recall of the divorce order.

She moved an application before the trial court and succeeded in establishing that her husband, an executive in a multinational company, played a fraud upon the court to get out of their six-year-old marriage. The couple had a son. Subsequently, the trial court recalled its divorce order.

Aggrieved, the husband challenged it in the High Court, which threw out his plea after noting that he had “resorted to fraudulent practice by forging the signatures of the wife on both the petitions and affidavits, bringing an impostor before the court and producing a fake advocate to achieve his sinister design of obtaining a fast decree of divorce so that he could marry some other lady.” It also slapped on him a penalty of Rs 2 lakh.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court severely reprimanded the man after he challenged the concurrent verdicts of the trial court and the High Court. “You played a fraud not just upon your wife but also the institution of judiciary. The findings are clear that the wife was never produced before the court. Analysis of records of the case and documents make it clear that there is no warrant to interfere with the concurrent orders of the two courts,” said a Bench led by Justice G S Singhvi.

The court also asked the counsel for the husband if he could now produce the lawyer to substantiate that the woman actually engaged her to lead the divorce case. The counsel, however, came up with a meek response: “There are more than 18 advocates by the name of Ranjana... there was an address, but it is perhaps incomplete.”