NEW DELHI: The Bombay High Court has held that a wife who leaves her matrimonial home due to a hostile or humiliating environment can still seek maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), even if the husband is not personally proved to have committed any act of cruelty.
Court's Observation
The Nagpur bench of Justice Urmila Joshi-Phalke, while dismissing a revision application filed by a husband challenging a family court maintenance order, observed that 'torture or ill-treatment in the husband's house would be sufficient for refusal by the wife-claimant to live with her husband, even though husband may not be guilty personally. Where a wife cannot reasonably hope to live with dignity with her husband she may refuse to live with him.'
Case Background
The couple married on 16 April 2012. The wife alleged that from the very first day of cohabitation, the husband's family subjected her to harassment over dowry. On 4 June 2014, she was assaulted by the husband with a waist belt, following which she rushed to a police station and was sent to the Women Cell. Despite repeated efforts by her and her family to resolve the dispute, she was left with no option but to take shelter at her parental house. She thereafter approached the family court at Nagpur seeking maintenance, contending that her husband, employed as a Gangman in the Railway Department with a monthly salary of ₹25,000, had refused and neglected to maintain her.
The family court ruled in her favour, awarding maintenance of ₹5,000 per month from 14 January 2017 to 31 December 2020, ₹6,000 per month from 1 January 2021 to 31 August 2024, and ₹7,000 per month from 1 September 2024 onward.
The husband challenged this order before the high court, arguing that the wife had left without sufficient cause and that her filing of a divorce petition demonstrated her unwillingness to resume cohabitation.
What the High Court Said
The court noted that the husband's cross-examination revealed he had made no effort to find out how his wife was living — a circumstance the court found 'sufficient to show that there is refusal and neglect on the part of the husband.'
The court further noted that maintenance proceedings are not punitive in nature. 'The object of Section 125 of the CrPC is to provide a summary remedy to save dependents from destitution and vagrancy, and thus to serve a social purpose apart from an independent obligation of the parties under their personal law...jurisdiction is preventive rather than remedial or punitive,' the bench said.
'Neglect or refusal may be implied from the conduct of a party and need not be a formal refusal. Refusal or neglect on the part of husband may be proved not only by express words, but also by his conduct,' it added.
Finding the family court's order just and reasonable, the high court dismissed the revision and directed the husband to pay all arrears within one month.
