New Delhi: A woman who refuses to reside with her husband without “any reasonable cause” is not entitled to maintenance under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPc), ruled the Jharkhand High Court, while declining to grant monthly maintenance to a woman, who, according to it, had made an “unreasonable demand” to live separately from her “old aged mother-in-law and maternal grandmother-in-law”.
A bench of Justice Subhash Chand Monday invoked Indian scriptures and the Constitution’s “Fundamental Duty” chapter to enumerate the duty of a wife in a matrimonial home. It was obligatory on the wife’s part to serve her husband’s mother and not to insist on unreasonable demands to live separately, the court said.
The observations were made while the court set aside a two-year-old order of a family court that directed the husband in the case to pay Rs 30,000 every month for the wife’s maintenance.
It, however, increased the monthly maintenance fixed for the couple’s minor son from Rs 15,000 to 25,000. The order came on an appeal filed by the husband challenging the family court’s direction to pay the initial maintenance amount to his wife and son.
After perusing the oral evidence recorded during the trial, the High Court concluded the wife had left the matrimonial home of her own will and her only reason was that she did not want to serve her mother-in-law and maternal grandmother-in-law. She also created pressure on the husband to live separately from them, which he did not agree to.
Based on the evidence, the court rejected the wife’s allegations that a dowry demand was raised by her in-laws which forced her to leave her matrimonial home. The court noted that independent witnesses did not support this version of the wife.
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Additionally, the court said the wife had filed a dowry harassment case against her husband as a countercase to “teach him a lesson”. The case, it added, was filed after the husband moved a suit for judicial separation, which, the court said, was done after he failed to bring back his wife.
The court then quoted Article 51A of Part IVA of the Constitution that relates to fundamental duties of citizens. It said the duties mentioned in this part of the Constitution were to provide “value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture”.
“It is the culture in India to serve the old aged mother-in-law or grandmother-in-law as the case may be by the wife in order to preserve this culture,” the court said.
It then mentioned lines from Yajurveda, Rigveda, Manu and Brihat Samhita to stress on the importance of a woman in a family.
The lines picked up from Yajurveda and found in the order are: “O woman you do not deserve to be defeated by challenges. You can defeat the mightiest challenge. Defeat the enemies and their armies, you have valour of (a) thousand.”
Similarly, the judge quoted the following lines from Rigveda. “O brilliant woman, remove ignorance with your bright intellect and provide bliss to all.”
From Manusmriti, he went on to cite: “Where the women of the family are miserable, the family is soon destroyed, but it always thrives where the women are contended.”
The judge, thereafter, advised the warring couple to get guided by the scriptures and resolve their differences to live together “for the welfare of the son”.
With regard to their son’s maintenance, the bench took account of the husband’s monthly salary, the additional income generated from a pathological laboratory and held he had sufficient means to provide for the child. It, therefore, ordered enhancement of the maintenance amount towards the son.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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Sometimes I wish the government expanded the judiciary to deal with the huge backlogs in our system. But then stories like this show that the quality of judges is already horrible and a further expansion would just dilute it even further.