On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that stringent legislation intended to protect women’s rights should not be used as a means of “chastise, threaten, domineer, or extort” their husbands. Judges BV Nagarathna and Pankaj Mithal noted that Hindu marriage was not a “commercial venture” but rather a spiritual institution that served as the basis for a family.
The bench noted that the top court repeatedly denounced the use of Indian Penal Code provisions such as rape, criminal intimidation, and cruelty to a married woman as a “combined package” in the majority of cases pertaining to matrimonial disputes. “The women need to be careful about the fact that these strict provisions of law in their hands are beneficial legislations for their welfare and not means to chastise, threaten, domineer or extort from their husbands,” it said.
The observations were made after the bench declared an estranged couple’s marriage to be irretrievably broken. “The provisions in the criminal law are for the protection and empowerment of women but sometimes are used by certain women more for purposes that they are never meant for,” the bench said.
In this case, the husband was ordered to resolve all of the estranged wife’s claims within a month by paying her ₹12crore in permanent alimony. However, the bench made comments on instances in which the wife and her family used criminal complaints for these major acts as a negotiating tactic and to pressure the husband and his family to meet their demands, which were mostly financial.
It added the police were sometimes ready to spring into action in selective situations and arrest the spouse or even his relatives, including ageing and bedridden parents and grandparents, with trial courts refusing from awarding bail to the accused owing to the “gravity of the offences” in the FIR.
“The collective effect of this chain of events is often overlooked by the actual individual players involved therein, which is that even minor disputes between husband and wife tend to snowball into ugly prodigious battles of ego and reputation and washing dirty linen in public, eventually leading to the relationship turning sour to the extent that there remains no possibility of a reconciliation or cohabitation,” it said.
The wife filed a plea with the Supreme Court asking for the transfer of a divorce suit under section 13 (1) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, that was pending in a Bhopal court to a Pune court. According to Article 142(1) of the Constitution, the husband had requested the dissolution of the marriage. The court stated that during the short time of their marriage, the parties and their family members were embroiled in a number of legal disputes.
The bench said the marriage did not really take off at all, observing no continuous cohabitation of the estranged couple. In light of the alimony issue, the court stated that the wife had asserted that the estranged husband had a net worth of ₹ 5,000 crore, which included several homes and enterprises in the US and India, and that he had given the first wife at least ₹ 500 crore at the time of their separation, omitting a Virginia home. “Thus, she claims permanent alimony commensurate to the status of the respondent-husband and on the same principles as was paid to the first wife of the respondent,” the bench noted.
The court voiced grave concerns about the parties’ propensity to view maintenance or alimony as a means of equating their wealth with one another. According to the court, it was common for parties to emphasise their spouse’s possessions, status, and income in their maintenance or alimony applications before requesting a sum that would match their spouse’s riches. “However, there is an inconsistency in this practice, because the demands of equalisation are made only in cases where the spouse is a person of means or is doing well for himself,” it said.
The bench questioned whether the wife would be prepared to pursue wealth equality if he became impoverished after a bad incident following their divorce. Fixing alimony depends on various factors and there cannot be any straight-jacket formula, it said. The husband had committed to paying ₹ 8 crore to resolve all claims in the joint plea, which sought to dissolve their marriage by a mutual divorce decree.
“The family court at Pune has assessed ₹ 10 crore as the quantum of permanent alimony that petitioner could be entitled to. We accept the said finding of the family court, Pune. An additional amount of ₹ 2 crore is liable to be paid to the petitioner so as to enable her to acquire another flat…,” said the bench. The court also quashed the criminal cases filed by the wife against the estranged husband.
