T MURALEEDHARAN Vs. C P VIJAYALAKSHMI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) How unable should a wife be to maintain herself in order to entitle her to claim maintenance under S.125 Cr.P.C This is the crucial question that arises for consideration in this revision petition.

(2.) The petitioner herein challenges an order passed under S.125 Cr.P.C. directing him to pay maintenance to his wife/claimant @ Rs. 2,000 per mensem. Marriage is admitted. Separate residence of the spouses consequent to strain in matrimony is not disputed. That the petitioner/husband is a business man having spent about two decades working abroad is also not seriously disputed, though there is a contention that his present business is not lucrative. The claimant/wife, aged about 39 years when she staked the claim is educationally qualified. She is a post graduate holding master's degree in arts. She is professionally qualified and is a law graduate. When they lived in matrimony, the claimant/wife was a house wife and had not pursued any career. She did not have the B.Ed. Degree which she asserted was necessary to enable her to secure employment as a teacher now. Though she admittedly held the professional qualification to practise as a lawyer, she had admittedly not enrolled herself and had never practised as a lawyer. She held out the reason that she is not conversant in the vernacular and that is why she did not choose to pursue a career in law. After the spouses started separate residence, admittedly she had worked in some schools as a teacher. It is her case that now, on account of the insistence on B.Ed. Degree for working as a teacher, she is not able to secure any such employment.

(3.) Before the learned Magistrate, the claimant/wife examined herself as PW 1. She was subjected to cross examination to be precise on her status as a woman "unable to maintain herself. The petitioner/husband chose not to take the witness stand.