Non-payment of interim maintenance as per the order of court is economic abuse and comes under the definition of domestic violence, a magistrate court has stated, while holding that a sweeper employed with the Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation had subjected his estranged wife to domestic violence.
The couple had been married in 2002 and have two children. The wife had complained that her in-laws and husband began harassing her on domestic matters a few years after the marriage and she also learnt of her husband’s extramarital affair. She said that her husband married the woman he was having an affair with, in 2016. Thereafter she lived separately with her children in Kurla. She had approached the court with an application for interim maintenance under the Domestic Violence Act. In Nov 2018, the court had passed an order for the same. Her advocate informed the court that the husband had not paid the maintenance and over Rs. 8 lakhs was pending to be recovered from him.
“The non-payment of interim maintenance as per the order of the court is economic abuse under the definition of domestic violence. Therefore there is ample evidence on record that respondent No 1 being husband of applicant and father of two minor children failed to perform his duties to maintain his wife and children,” Metropolitan Magistrate VA Tekwani said in the order.
The wife had also claimed Rs. 25 lakhs in compensation from the man. The court said that it seems due to the domestic violence committed by the husband she had to live separately along with her minor children in mental agony. “Respondent No. 1 performed a second marriage without her consent in her lifetime. It is also mental harassment to the applicant,” the court stated. It ordered him to pay Rs. 5 lakhs as compensation to her. It also directed him to pay Rs. 20,000 to his wife and their children as monthly interim maintenance.
