The man had requested a period of two years to pay the full amount. (Figurative)
New Delhi:
The Supreme Court sentenced a man to three months in prison for contempt of court after he failed to pay an outstanding amount of Rs 2.60 million along with monthly alimony of Rs 1.75 lakhs to his ex-wife.
The superior court said that the husband has already received a long rope and that he has not taken advantage of the opportunities he was given to pay alimony to his ex-wife.
A bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian said in a recent order: “We have already given (the defendant) a long rope. The defendant (husband) has not taken advantage of the opportunities given him. Therefore, we punish the contemnor / defendant for committing contempt of this court and sentence him to prison for a period of three months in civil prison. “
The superior court noted that the husband did not comply with his order of February 19, which gave him one last chance to pay the entire amount of the outstanding maintenance along with the monthly amount previously set by the court.
On February 19, the superior court had said that a husband cannot waive the responsibility of paying alimony to his estranged wife and gave the husband one last chance, otherwise he would be imprisoned.
The man, who claimed to have been working on a national security project in the telecommunications sector, had said he had no money and was looking for two years to pay the full amount.
The higher court had said that the man had lost credibility by repeatedly failing to follow the court’s order and wondered how a person in this type of case was associated with a national security project.
He had told the man, a resident of Tamil Nadu, that “the husband cannot abdicate his responsibility to provide food for his wife and it is his duty to provide maintenance.”
He had pointed out that the man had been ordered by the lower court and the decision upheld by the higher court and the higher court to pay money to his wife under two headings which include the monthly maintenance of Rs 1.75 lakh and the other are past maintenance arrears as of 2009, amounting to approximately Rs 2.60 crore.
The higher court had told his lawyer that the husband has not complied with a single court order and that if he does not make the payments within two to three weeks, he will be sent to jail.
The wife had filed a case under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act with the Chennai Metropolitan Court of First Instance in 2009.
The court had allowed the wife to share the house until the husband made alternative arrangements for their permanent residence.
He had ordered the husband to pay 2 million rupees as maintenance to the wife; Rs 50 lakh compensation for leaving her for 12 years; Rs 50 lakh for living an extramarital life; Rs 50 lakh for letting his wife deal with court cases; Rs 50 lakh for forcing her to take a job in a media company; Rs 50 lakh for mental torture and agony for living openly with foreign women, and Rs 50 lakh for not paying rent for the shared house.
In the husband’s appeal against the order, he was ordered by the court of sessions to pay Rs 1 lakh per month in maintenance from the date of filing of the petition, which is January 6, 2009, and 75,000 rupees per month for residential accommodation as of that date. .
The superior court confirmed the order of the session court on December 2, 2016, after which the husband filed the appeal in the superior court, which was dismissed by the superior court on October 26, 2017 with an instruction that within six months he would pay maintenance and arrears.
Thereafter, the wife filed a petition for review in 2018 and the husband was ordered to settle the maintenance arrears of Rs 1.75 lakh before the 10th of each month.
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