Court orders man to pay estranged spouse alimony constant together with his personal life-style

Photo: IANS

Bombay: A hearing court in Mumbai found that a woman who is estranged from her husband must be able to live a life equal to that of her husband and, based on that principle, ordered a 38-year-old man to live is Deputy Vice President. President of a company to pay his estranged wife and 10-year-old daughter Rs. 90,000 each month in rent and interim maintenance. The man’s 34-year-old wife had accused him and her late father-in-law of domestic violence. The court ordered the man to pay the sum from the back date of 2019, when the woman first applied for provisional maintenance. The man reportedly earns Rs. 35 lakhs annually and also gets Rs. 10 lakhs as a bonus.

In delivering its verdict, the court referred to cases where the father-in-law had forced the woman to eat candy after candy while intoxicated, and in another case, when the woman was pregnant, he had forced her to check and her husband hit her when she refused to sign, the Times of India reported.

The court found that “Defendant No. 1 is the applicant’s husband. It was his duty to protect his wife in such a situation. What is more, he should have seen that such a situation did not arise. Instead, the defendant remained silent and did not take any constructive steps to support his wife. This action on the part of the respondent is nothing more than mental and physical harm and harassment of the applicant and constitutes domestic violence within the meaning of the law.”

The court went on to say that other instances where the woman’s father-in-law smoked in the home during her pregnancy, causing her discomfort and also taking her daughter and smoking in a locked room, also constituted domestic violence. “In such a situation, it was up to the respondents (the woman’s husband and his mother) to ask the father-in-law not to smoke or to leave the house and smoke.

The court also rejected the husband’s allegation that the woman had left the house alone, instead blaming him for creating a situation in which the applicant was forced to leave her home.

The woman had told the court that the problems started shortly after her marriage, claiming her in-laws wanted her son to marry a rich girl. They were also unhappy with her after she gave birth to a girl, she said, a charge denied by her husband.