GUNWANT BHAGWAN WAKODE Vs. MADHURI GUNWANT WAKODE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS Revision Application under Section 397 of the Criminal Procedure Code is directed against the order of the Additional Sessions Judge, Yavatmal passed in Criminal Revision application No. 155/88. The petitioner Gunwant Bhagwan Wakode is a Government servant and according to the minor respondent Madhuri, he is her putative father. She claims to have been born to the present petitioner from one Pushpa d/o Vithova Butale.

(2.) AN application for grant of maintenance allowance under Section 125 of the Criminal procedure Code was made by the respondent through her mother Pushpa alleging that Pushpa and the revisional petitioner used to live at a very short distance from each other in the Talao fail area at Yavatmal. They came to know each other, became intimate and upon promise of marriage, Pushpa physically surrendered herself to Gunwant. She conceived from him and in the first instance gave birth to a femal child which died soon thereafter. Pushpa continued to live with Gunwant thereafter also and became pregnant second time from him. She gave birth to the respondent on 17-8-1987. There-after, the petitioner had not bothered to see how she was being maintained by the mother. It was, therefore, a clear case of neglect as also refusal on the part of the putative father to properly maintain her. She, therefore, claimed entitlement to the maintenance allowance. An application was accordingly filed in the Court of the Judicial magistrate, First Class, Yavatmal vide Misc. Criminal Application No. 144/87.

(3.) THE petitioner Gunwant disputed his paternity of the child and submitted that he was being falsely held responsible for the conception of Pushpa, the birth of the child Madhuri and was only thus, being fastened with liability to provide maintenance to her. Upon contest, not only gunwant and Pushpa and also witnesses were examined on behalf of each of them. Upon consideration of the evidence, the learned Magistrate held that Gunwant's paternity of the minor applicant Madhuri had not come to be established. He, therefore, dismissed the application.