M CHANDRAN Vs. B JAGADAMMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner in this petition which is under S.482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is the husband of the Ist respondent and father of the minor 2nd respondent. Respondents claimed maintenance under S.125 Cr. P. C. According to the petitioner who was the respondent in that petition, his wife was refusing to live with him without justifiable cause and he had not refused or neglected to maintain. The Additional Judicial First Class Magistrate, Trivandrum found against this plea and awarded maintenance to the mother and the child. That was confirmed in a revision filed by the petitioner before the Sessions Court, Trivandrum. That is being challenged in this petition. According to the petitioner the courts below went wrong in awarding separate maintenance sine, grounds to justify it had not been established. Whether there was wilful neglect or refusal to maintain has not, according to the petitioner, been found. That is not correct. That has been found by the Magistrate and it is held that the offer made by the husband to take the wife and child back to his house is not genuine.

(2.) Since a number of similar cases invoking jurisdiction under S.482 of the Cr. P. C. are before me today and naturally there may be many more similar cases in this court, I think it is worthwhile to consider the scope of S.482 Cr. P. C. in these proceedings. S.482 saves inherent power in the High Court to make such orders as are necessary to give effect to any order under the Code of Criminal Procedure, or to prevent abuse of the process of any Court or otherwise secure the ends of justice. The provision, it may be noticed, confers no power on the High Court. All that the section does is to declare that such inherent power as the High Court may possess has not been taken away or abridged by any provisions of the Code. S.482 Cr. P. C. has not given any additional power to the Court which it did not possess before that section was enacted Power is inherent but the courts are bound to exercise self restraint in its use. The use of the extraordinary power so inherent in the court and saved under S.482 Cr. P. C. is to be reserved, as far as possible, to extraordinary cases.

(3.) When power is expressly taken away by the statute, such power cannot be saved by reference to the inherent power.