HC upholds Rs 1.3L monthly maintenance to woman

MUMBAI: In an order that brought relief to a woman and her minor children, Justice M L Tahaliyani of the Bombay high court dismissed a challenge by a director of a steel conglomerate against a Rs 1.3 lakh monthly maintenance order after observing that he had schemed to avoid disclosure of his true income.
The HC refused to interfere with the order of a lower court and did not reduce the maintenance saying that it could be fixed by court based on the husband’s possible and discernible income.
The husband’s plea was against a Navi Mumbai magistrate’s order requiring him to pay Rs 1 lakh as monthly maintenance to his estranged wife and daughters under the provisions of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence (DV) Act and to pay Rs 30,000 as monthly rent for their house.
After seeing income tax papers produced by the husband to show a reduced income, the HC said it’s “clear that he was scheming and avoiding disclosure of his true sources of income and his true income to frustrate a genuine claim of his wife and children”. The couple had married in 1997 and the husband filed for divorce on grounds of cruelty in 2003 in Delhi. The Supreme Court transferred the petition to Bandra family court. In 2010, the wife, staying separate since 2004 filed a DV case in Navi Mumbai where she resides.
The husband, one of the two directors of the steel company, had produced orders of an appellate commissioner of income tax who had reduced his income from Rs 27 crore to Rs 4 crore for assessment year 2001-2002. The HC said even then the income was much more than what the husband had declared in court. In 2013, the company resolution showed his annual salary as Rs 6 lakh, a drop from Rs 24 lakh. He thus pleaded he was unable to pay his wife Rs 1.3 lakh monthly his salary was only Rs 50,000. The HC said “it was obvious that the income shown in the I-T returns and salary, based on the resolution did not appear to be the husband’s real income.”
“It need not be mentioned here that income disclosed in the I-T returns is not always the correct income of a person,” said Justice Tahaliyani. “The court has powers to determine the income of the husband on the basis of records placed before it and to determine a just and proper amount as maintenance to be paid to the aggrieved person.’’ “An order of maintenance under Section 125 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPc) or under Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, can be passed on the basis of palpable income of the husband,” said Justice Tahaliyani. Section 125 of CrPc provides for maintenance to a wife, children, parents.