NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a wife cannot be granted interim maintenance if an allegation of adultery is made against her which, at first glance, looks true.A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Vipul M Pancholi quashed the order of the Rajasthan High Court which had held that a wife cannot be denied interim maintenance during pendency of the husband’s application under Section 125(4) of the Criminal Procedure Code relating to adultery. It allowed the plea of a husband who approached the court through lawyer Prabhjit Jauhar against the orders of a trial court and HC rejecting his plea to examine allegations of adultery before granting interim maintenance.“It is obvious that when a case is sought to be proved by circumstantial evidence, it requires a detailed study of the circumstances presented. The evidence furnished in support thereof, including verification, particularly when the evidence in question is electronic, etc. These procedures are bound to take time. Since the stipulation in Section 125 (4) is that if adultery is proved, the wife would neither be entitled to interim nor final maintenance, we are of the view that if a husband files an application under Section 125(4) and is, at the first instance, able to establish the charge through evidence ex facie, then only, there can be said to be a bar to interim maintenance,” the bench said.It added that the trial court and HC clearly fell into error to hold that it was only at the stage of final adjudication that such a question could be decided. “This view would render otiose what has been provided in the statute,” it said.Section 125(4) says that no wife shall be entitled to receive an allowance for maintenance or interim maintenance and expenses of proceedings, as the case may be, from her husband if she is living in adultery, or if, without any sufficient reason, she refuses to live with her husband, or if they are living separately by mutual consent.
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“If the application for maintenance is to be denied at the interim stage itself, the party having filed the application under Section 125(4) must present clear and cogent evidence that would ex-facie establish adultery on the part of the claimant for maintenance,” the bench said.Noting that the husband in the case has placed a large number of photographs and 92 videos to substantiate his allegation against the wife, the court said they were perhaps procured from a private detective and expressed the need to frame a law to regulate the sector as there was an increasing reliance on private investigators to gather information.“We believe that regulation and accountability are equally important in the sphere of private investigation,” it said
