Mumbai: Maintenance can’t be denied over adultery charges, says court – Times of India

MUMBAI: Observing that evidence related to adultery cannot be accepted at the stage of deciding interim maintenance to the wife, a sessions court ordered a Goregaon businessman to pay Rs 20,000 every month to his estranged wife. The court set aside a magistrate court’s 2018 order that rejected the woman’s plea for interim maintenance.
“The respondent (husband) has not filed any document to show that the wife has any source of income. Filing of the divorce petition on the grounds of adultery and cruelty itself shows the harassment on the part of the respondent to the wife, at least at this stage,” the sessions court said.
The woman said that her husband earned Rs 30 lakh a month from his business. The husband and wife both made allegations of adultery against each other. The woman had alleged that her husband demanded divorce only so that he could marry another woman. The husband, however, alleged that the woman had inflicted unbearable pain on him and his family and was in a relationship with another man. In 2017, after the husband filed for divorce on grounds of adultery, the woman filed a domestic violence complaint against him before the magistrate’s court and sought an interim maintenance. The magistrate’s court, however, rejected her plea alluding to the adultery allegations after which she moved the sessions court. The sessions court said that the magistrate’s order was not legal or correct.
Referring to evidence cited by the husband, the sessions court said, “Trial court (magistrate’s court) based its opinion on the nude photographs, WhatsApp messages etc despite that it requires to be proved in the trial as per the priovisions laid down under The Evidence Act. It cannot be accepted as a evidence at such earlier stage and more particularly while deciding the interim maintenance to the wife against the respondent.”