New Delhi: The Allahabad High Court has refused to grant maintenance to a woman after noting that she had left her matrimonial home of her own accord.
The order by a single-judge bench of Justice Prashant Kumar said: “The provision of Sections 125(4) Cr.P.C. is very clear that no wife shall be entitled to receive any maintenance from her husband if she refused to live with her husband.”
Section 125(4) of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.P.C.) says that “no wife shall be entitled to receive an allowance…from her husband under this section if she is living in adultery, or if, without any sufficient reason, she refuses to live with her husband, or if they are living separately by mutual consent”.
The high court was hearing a revision petition filed by the husband challenging an order passed by a family court in Mathura in August last year, ordering him to pay maintenance of Rs. 10,000 to his wife. The husband was represented by advocate Abhinav Gaur.
In the high court’s order, passed on 1 June, the judge noted that in this case, the wife had left the matrimonial home on her own in December 2017. He then observed, “Since she had left on her own free will, she is not entitled to get the benefit of maintenance, as per Section 125 (4) Cr.P.C.”
The HC set aside the lower court’s order, saying it “suffer(s) from illegality & perversity”.
On her part, the wife had claimed that she had not left her matrimonial home of her own accord and that she had done so because she was being “taunted and asked to bring more dowry”, the order records.
Wife alleges dowry harassment
According to the petition filed in the high court, a copy of which ThePrint has seen, the couple tied the knot in December 2015. The wife, the petition said, underwent a medical examination in December 2017, and this revealed that she had undergone a surgical procedure because of which she could not conceive.
According to the petition, the husband had filed a police complaint the same month accusing the woman and her family of having assaulted him and members of his family, leading to an FIR. He eventually filed an application for divorce in January 2018.
In February that same year, the wife had filed a cross-complaint accusing the husband and his relatives of various offences under the Indian Penal Code, including cruelty (Section 498A) voluntarily causing hurt (323), criminal intimidation (506), causing miscarriage without woman’s consent (313) and unnatural offences (377), along with provisions of the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, the petition said
According to the order, the wife’s lawyer made the argument that she had left because she was being asked for dowry, that “no wife will leave the house of the husband without any rhyme or reason”, and that she is still ready and willing to go back to her matrimonial home.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: Mathura, Hapur, Jhajjar – Small-town divorces rising and shocking courts, lawyers, families