Supreme Court Judgement on maintenance

Law point: the maintenance would be awarded from the date of the order and such maintenance could be granted from the date of the application only by recording special reasons.

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA

CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO.1331 OF 2014

(Arising out of S.L.P. (Criminal) No. 1565 of 2013)

Bhuwan Mohan Singh … Appellant

Versus

Meena & Ors. …Respondent

J U D G M E N T

The two issues that pronouncedly emanate in this appeal by special leave are whether the Family Court while deciding an application under Section 7 of the Family Court Act, 1984 (for brevity, “the Act”) which includes determination of grant of maintenance to the persons as entitled under that provision, should allow adjournments in an extremely liberal manner remaining oblivious of objects and reasons of the Act and also keeping the windows of wisdom closed and the sense of judicial responsiveness suspended to the manifest perceptibility of vagrancy, destitution, impecuniosity, struggle for survival and the emotional fracture, a wife likely to face under these circumstances and further exhibiting absolute insensitivity to her condition, who, after loosing support of the husband who has failed to husband the marital status denies the wife to have maintenance for almost nine years as that much time is consumed to decide the lis and, in addition, to restrict the grant of maintenance to the date of order on some kind of individual notion. Both the approaches, as we perceive, not only defeat the command of the legislature but also frustrate the hope of wife and children who are deprived of adequate livelihood and whose aspirations perish like mushroom and possibly the brief candle of sustenance joins the marathon race of extinction. This delay in adjudication by the Family Court is not only againsthuman rights but also against the basic embodiment of dignity of an individual.

Hon'ble Justice

Deepak Mishra

Place: New Delhi

Date: July 15, 2014