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(Guest)

Whether divorced wife by mutual consent who has not remarrie

 

Whether divorced wife by mutual consent who has not remarried is entitled to get maintenance U/S 125 of CRPC?

 


In
case
of
Vanamala
(Smt.)
v.
H.M.
Ranganatha
Bhatta2, the provision contained in Section 125 of the
Cr.P.C. came to be considered and their Lordships of
the Supreme Court has held that the divorced wife by
mutual consent who has not remarried is entitled for
maintenance and cannot be debarred by invoking Section
125(4) of the Cr.P.C.
and observed as under:-
“3.........On a plain reading of this Section
it seems fairly clear that the expression
'wife' in the said sub-section does not have
the extended meaning of including a woman who
has been divorced. This is for the obvious
reason that unless there is relationship of
husband and wife there can be no question of a
divorcee woman living in adultery or without
sufficient reason refusing to live with her
husband. After divorce where is the occasion
for the woman to live with her husband?
Similarly there would be no question of the
husband and wife living separately by mutual
consent because after divorce there is no need
for consent to live separately. In the
context, therefore, sub-section (4) of Section
125 does not apply to the case of a woman who
has been divorced or who has obtained a decree
for divorce. In our view, therefore, this
contention is not well founded.”

HIGH COURT OF CHHATTISGARH AT BILASPUR

SINGLE BENCH: HON'BLE SHRI JUSTICE SANJAY K. AGRAWAL.

CRIMINAL REVISION NO. 399/2008

Rishikesh
Singh
Singh
alias
T.R.
VERSUS

Kiran Gautam

(CRIMINAL REVISION UNDER SECTION 19(4) OF THE FAMILY
COURTS ACT, 1984)

(Passed on 05/09/2014)

https://www.lawweb.in/2014/10/whether-divorced-wife-by-mutual-consent.html



Learning

 1 Replies

Suneet Gupta (www.vashiadvocates.com)     06 October 2014

No disrespect to the Honourable Supreme Court - however the above judgement appears to be judicially unsound and stretching the law to absurd levels.

  • Section 125(1) Explanation creates the judicial fiction that 'wife' includes a 'a woman who has been divorced by, or has obtained a divorce from her husband and has not remarried'.
  • The following sub-sections need to be interpreted accordingly - if wife includes women who has obtained divorce, then obtaining a divorce by mutual consent obviously means that the husband and 'wife' are 'living separately' by mutual consent.
  • In view of the above judgement, it would mean that husbands would refuse to a divorce by mutual consent or for any divorce whatsoever, as they can be asked for maintenance at any time subsequently under Sec 125 of the CrPC
  • Additionally, it is an established principle of law (both Civil and Criminal) that any issue that has been conclusively adjudicated by a Court of Law shall not be raised subsequently in another Court of Law by the same parties (also no one shall be punished for the same crime twice).
  • When divorce by mutual consent conclusively adjudicates all the issues between the husband and wife (including maintenance), then how can the maintenance issue be raised again by the wife in another Court.

It is judgements like these that have caused all the rot that is the situation in the Indian Judicial system today and led to unnecessary and extortionary litigation and inexorable delays. While I cannot and do not say that the authors of this judgement are jokers, I surely believe that this judgement is a big joke and the height of perverse interpretation of the law.


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