Delhi High Court: Sanjeev Sachdeva, J.dismissed a petition filed against the order of the trial court whereby it had recalled its earlier order and restored the petition for maintenance filed by the respondent-wife.
The wife had filed a petition for maintenance under Section 125 CrPC. The trial court had initially awarded interim maintenance of Rs 2000 per month. The proceedings pending from 2003-2012. On 08-10-2012, the wife was not present before the trial court, Her father prayed for exemption on the ground that she was an asthma patient and therefore couldn’t come to the court. However, the trial court rejected the prayer and closed her evidence. Since there was no evidence on record to prove the factum of marriage between the respondent and the petitioner, the trial court dismissed the wife’s petition. She filed an application seeking a recall of the said order which was allowed by the trial court and her petition was restored. Aggrieved thereby, the husband filed the present revision petition.
Abhimanyu Kampani and Samarth Teotia, Advocates appeared for the husband. Per contra, the wife was represented by Manika Tripathy Pandey, Ashutosh Kaushik and Brahm Kumar Pandey, Advocacies.
As per the High Court, the trial erred in not appreciating that there was no dispute about factum of marriage between the parties. Perusing the grounds mentioned in the present revision petition the Court observed: “The averments in the Revision Petition itself establishes that there is no dispute with regard to factum of marriage. Even if assuming there is no evidence on record, Trial Court can still pass an order of maintenance, if there are admissions on record. In the present case, Trial Court has dismissed the petition only on the ground that factum of marriage has not been proved.”
In the Court’s opinion, to accept at this stage, the plea of the husband and the wife should have filed an appeal, would amount to gross harassment of the wife as the Judgment of the trial court would anyway be set aside for the asking. Also, referring to the wife’s medical records, the Court was of the view that she had sufficient cause for being not able to appear before the trial court. Therefore, the present revision petition was dismissed. [Surender Singh Arya v. Meenu Arya, 2019 SCC OnLine Del 7998, decided on 05-04-2019]
