No need to say Indian judiciary is biased towards men, but not this extent, that also Order came from Supreme Court of India. In India one word of Women is enough and its Gospel Truth; but when man say he was harassed by his Wife, he has to prove Everything. if not order will go against him even he is not at fault. If she claim same cruelty then she will get not only Divorce but maintenance too.
NEW DELHI: A man seeking divorce has been asked by the Supreme Court to bear the cost of litigation on behalf of his wife.
As a condition for entertaining the man’s appeal against a Karnataka high court decision to quash the trial court’s divorce decree granted to him, a bench of Justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhay asked him to pay Rs 50,000 to his wife to enable her to engage a lawyer to fight the case against him.
The bench entertained Madhav’s appeal against the HC judgment, but ordered, “The petitioner is directed to pay Rs 10,000 per month to the respondent (Ashwini) towards maintenance till the disposal of the special leave petition/appeal and a sum of Rs 50,000 towards legal expenses.” The court asked the husband to pay up the legal cost within four weeks.
“For the month of July, the amount of maintenance shall be paid on or before July 23. For all succeeding months, the amount shall be paid by the 10th day of each month,” the bench said while asking Ashwini to respond to her husband’s appeal in 10 weeks.
Madhav had got a divorce decree from a Bijapur trial court on the ground of mental cruelty caused to him by Ashwini. However, on appeal, the Gulbarga bench of the HC comprising Justices D V Shylendra Kumar and H S Kempanaa set it aside, saying trivial fights between the couple had been exaggerated to sound like mental cruelty.
The HC had said, “We are of the definite opinion that the husband has not made out any case to prove any degree of cruelty meted by the wife against him; that differences between a couple during marital life is otherwise not uncommon in our society and more so in such families, and that being blown out of proportion and when we notice that the wife herself has been subjected to acts of cruelty; and the view of the trial judge is nothing short of a highly prejudiced and biased view taken against the wife, not sustainable in law.”
While entertaining Madhav’s appeal against the HC judgment, the apex court bench of Justices Singhvi and Mukhopadhay last week said increasingly, it was coming across cases of husbands being unfair to educated wives.
“While marrying, you (men) looked for educated girls or those who were in service. When disputes arose, you want to refuse maintenance on the ground that she is educated or that she is in service. If you cannot accommodate an educated wife, then you should not have married an educated girl,” the bench said before asking Madhav to pay monthly alimony to Ashwini.
The bench said it was a question of how the husband accommodated the views and needs of the educated wife. “Do not marry at all if you do not want to accommodate educated girls,” it observed.
