NEW DELHI. July 26: In an important judgement, a Delhi court has ruled that women cannot claim a pie of their in-laws’ property, observing that it is the only husbands who are liable to provide the wife’s maintenance and not the in-laws.
While dismissing the plea of a woman, Ms Mamta Kapoor, who claimed rights on the property of her in-laws, the additional sessions judge, R.K. Gauba, said, “Merely because the girl had lived in the property on question in the past, the said property does not become her shared household.”
Seeking maintenance, Ms Mamta had filed a petition under Section 12 of the Domestic Violence (DV) Act demanding right of residence in her in-laws house.
The court observed, “It is quite possible that the husband and wife may have lived together in dozens of places such as with the husband’s father, his uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces etc. If the interpretation canvassed by the girl is accepted, all these houses of the husband’s relatives will be shared households and the wife can well insist in living in all these houses.”
Ms Mamta and Mr Suresh got married in 2001 and two babies were born out of their wedlock. Taking objection to the fact that Ms Mamta has not made her husband Mr Suresh party in the petition to claim the maintenance and had not demanded residential rights from him ASJ Gauba said, “It must also be seen that the respondent has not made any attempt to claim right of residence from her husband. The husband has somehow evaporated from the scene.”
After hearing the judgement, senior Supreme Court lawyer, Mr K.T.S. Tulsi, talking to this newspaper over phone said, “It is an interesting judgement. The order passed by ASJ Gauba made it clear that as the husband is the better half of the wife, so the husband is liable to provide the maintenance to the wife. Even if the in-laws’ are made parties to the case in the petition by Mamta, the court has rightly said that it is the husband who should be made liable to provide maintenance.”