Himachal Pradesh HC Upholds Rs 4,000 Monthly Maintenance to Divorced Wife, Rejects Husband's Plea of Casual Labour Status
A Division Bench of the Himachal Pradesh High Court dismissed a husband's revision petition and confirmed Rs 4,000 monthly maintenance to his divorced wife, holding that his business loan belied his claim of being a mere casual labourer.
The Himachal Pradesh High Court has dismissed a criminal revision petition filed by Surjeet, a petitioner-husband who challenged a Family Court order awarding his divorced wife, Savitri Devi, Rs 4,000 per month as maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Division Bench, comprising Justice Vivek Singh Thakur and Justice Ranjan Sharma, pronounced judgment on 10 August 2026, affirming the order of the Additional Principal Judge, Family Court, Hamirpur dated 23 January 2024. The bench found that the husband had failed to substantiate any of his four grounds of challenge—improper appreciation of evidence, the wife's alleged ability to self-sustain, the quantum being excessive, and the effect of the divorce decree—and directed him to release the maintenance amount within four weeks.
The Dispute Before the High Court
Savitri Devi filed Case Registration No. 109 of 2019 before the Family Court at Hamirpur, stating that she had married Surjeet on 21 December 1997 and that three children were born of the marriage. She averred that the husband had misbehaved with her, denied basic necessities including food and clothing, and evicted her from the matrimonial home in 2009. She further stated that she was forced to live in a single room of an old house while the husband and other family members occupied a newly constructed house, which she was not even permitted to enter.
Separately, Savitri Devi filed HMA Petition No. 119 of 2019 before the same Family Court seeking dissolution of marriage under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, on grounds of cruelty. A decree of divorce was passed on 22 November 2021, with specific findings that acts of cruelty had forced her to leave the matrimonial home and that she had not maintained physical relations with the husband on account of such cruelty.
In the Section 125 CrPC proceedings, Surjeet opposed the claim by asserting that he was only a casual labourer incapable of maintaining the wife, and that Savitri Devi worked as a tailor and earned “handsomely.” The Family Court framed issues on 7 May 2022 and passed an interim maintenance order on 13 September 2022. After recording evidence from both sides, the Family Court determined, by reference to a State Government Notification, that a casual labourer earns minimum wages of Rs 375 per day, placing the husband's monthly income at Rs 11,250. It then awarded Rs 4,000 per month as maintenance with effect from 18 May 2019, the date of filing. Surjeet challenged that order in Cr. Revision (FC) No. 19 of 2024. A co-ordinate bench of the High Court stayed the impugned order on 17 July 2024. The High Court also requisitioned the records of both the divorce proceedings and the Section 125 proceedings and, by an order dated 24 June 2025, directed parties to file affidavits of assets and liabilities.
Four Grounds of Challenge and How the Bench Addressed Each
Improper appreciation of evidence. The bench rejected this at the outset. It recorded that the Family Court had completed a full trial—Savitri Devi examined herself as the sole witness on 7 December 2022, and Surjeet examined three witnesses including himself on 28 August 2023 and 29 November 2023. The Family Court applied the State Government Notification on minimum wages before quantifying maintenance. The bench found nothing in the revisional record to show that the trial process was flawed.
Wife's ability to maintain herself. The bench held that it was the husband's burden to prove the wife's income. Relying on paragraph 23 of the Family Court's order, the bench noted a specific finding that Surjeet had produced no evidence establishing that Savitri Devi was earning. Mere assertion that she was a tailor and earned handsomely was insufficient; conjectures and surmises could not form the basis for denying maintenance.
Quantum of Rs 4,000 as excessive. The bench rejected this ground on two distinct counts. First, the quantum was anchored to the State Government Notification on minimum wages for casual labourers, which Surjeet had not challenged as perverse, illegal or inapplicable. Second, the affidavit filed by Surjeet in the present proceedings revealed that he had availed a business loan of Rs 93,000—a facility not ordinarily available to a casual labourer. The bench held that this directly contradicted his deposition before the Family Court that he was merely a labourer and supported Savitri Devi's case that he was in fact a contractor. In the circumstances, Rs 4,000 from an assessed income of Rs 11,250 was “fair, just, reasonable and commensurate with the status of parties.”
The bench drew on the Supreme Court's ruling in Shamima Farooqui v. Shahid Khan, (2015) 5 SCC 705, for the proposition that an able-bodied husband capable of earning cannot escape maintenance liability by citing financial constraints, retirement, or ill-health. Bald pleas of incapacity require cogent, concrete, legally admissible material to substantiate them. Surjeet had placed nothing on record to show bodily infirmity or disability.
The bench also cited Chaturbhuj v. Sitabai, (2008) 2 SCC 316, and Deepa Joshi v. Gaurav Joshi, 2026 SCC Online 597, for the principle that the husband's primary obligation to maintain his wife cannot be subordinated to loan repayments, asset construction commitments, or business arrangements.
Divorce as extinguishing the maintenance obligation. This ground was met with a detailed analysis of Section 125(1)(b) CrPC and the disqualifications in Section 125(4) CrPC. The bench laid down its understanding plainly: the Explanation to Section 125(1)(b) CrPC deems a divorced woman who has not remarried to be a “wife” for the purpose of maintenance. This right persists until she remarries. Section 125(4), which lists disqualifications based on adultery, refusal to live with the husband without sufficient reason, and mutual consent to live separately, does not apply to a divorced woman, because after divorce there is no occasion for her to live with the former husband or to consent to separation.
The bench held that none of the three disqualifications under Section 125(4) were made out. Surjeet had not alleged that Savitri Devi was living in adultery and had placed no material to that effect. The cruelty findings in the divorce decree—which had attained finality—constituted “sufficient reasons” that compelled Savitri Devi to leave the matrimonial home, ruling out the second disqualification. There was no case of mutual consent to separate. Savitri Devi had deposed as PW-1 that she had not remarried, and that fact remained uncontroverted.
The bench relied on a chain of Supreme Court decisions affirming the divorced wife's right to maintenance: Gurmeet Kaur v. Surjit Singh alias Jet Singh, (1996) 1 SCC 39; Rohtash Singh v. Ramendri, (2000) 3 SCC 180; Vanamala v. H.M. Ranganatha Bhatta, (1995) 5 SCC 299; Manoj Kumar v. Champa Devi, (2018) 12 SCC 748; and Dr. Swapan Kumar Banerjee v. State of West Bengal, (2020) 19 SCC 342. It also cited the Supreme Court's July 2026 decision in Himanshu Chordia v. State of Rajasthan, Criminal Appeal No. 003599 of 2026, for the proposition that Section 125(4) does not foreclose the right of a divorced wife and that Section 125 must be interpreted liberally given its beneficent and social-justice character.
The Bench on Revisional Jurisdiction and Procedural Objections
Surjeet's counsel raised an additional contention that the Family Court order could not stand because the parties had not filed affidavits of assets and liabilities as directed by the Supreme Court in Rajnesh v. Neha and Another, (2021) 2 SCC 324. The bench rejected this on four counts. The Rajnesh direction on affidavits applies to interim maintenance proceedings; final maintenance is adjudicated on oral and documentary evidence. More critically, it was Surjeet himself who had not filed such an affidavit before the Family Court, and he could not take advantage of his own default. Additionally, the affidavits filed pursuant to the High Court's order of 24 June 2025 actually undermined his position—the business loan of Rs 93,000 appearing in his own affidavit contradicted his claim of being a casual labourer.
On the scope of revisional jurisdiction under Section 19(4) of the Family Courts Act, 1984, the bench reiterated that interference is permissible only where an order suffers from illegality, impropriety, or irregularity in proceedings. Surjeet's counsel had not pointed to any such defect. The bench quoted Shamima Farooqui again for the proposition that where substantial justice has been done, a revisional court cannot interfere merely because it might have arrived at a different conclusion. The bench added that invoking the revisional jurisdiction to delay a wife's maintenance right was itself deprecated in the circumstances of this case.
Observations on the Three Stages of Section 125 Proceedings
While disposing of the revision, the bench set out its understanding of how Section 125 CrPC proceedings are structured. The first stage is the petition for maintenance under Section 125(1), which may result in interim maintenance under the second proviso. The second stage is an application by the husband under Section 125(4) invoking one of the disqualifications. The final stage is the order of maintenance under Section 125(5). The bench held that the mere pendency of a Section 125(4) application cannot be a ground to deny or stop interim maintenance already granted. Interim maintenance continues to operate until the Section 125(4) application is conclusively decided. Where a husband relies on adultery as a ground under Section 125(4), only ex-facie proof of adultery—not mere allegations—can bar interim maintenance.
In the present case, Surjeet had not even filed an application under Section 125(4). The bench held that in those circumstances the interim maintenance order and the final order under Section 125(5) passed by the Family Court on 23 January 2024 were unimpeachable.
Order
The Division Bench dismissed Cr. Revision (FC) No. 19 of 2024. The impugned order of the Additional Principal Judge, Family Court, Hamirpur dated 23 January 2024 —awarding Savitri Devi Rs 4,000 per month from 18 May 2019 — was upheld. Surjeet was directed to release the maintenance amount to Savitri Devi within four weeks, after adjusting or setting off any maintenance already paid under other statutes in the divorce or other proceedings. Parties were directed to bear their respective costs. All pending miscellaneous applications stood disposed of.