Smt Chakan Kaur vs Arjan Singh

S.S. Dewan, J.—The Petitioner Smt. Charan Kaur herein filed an application for maintenance u/s 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (for short, the Code) claiming to be the wife of the Respondent, on November 16,1978. The Magistrate decided that application on May 31, 1979, and awarded maintenance @ Rs. 200/- per month to her Feeling aggrieved, the Respondent went up in revision and the learned Additional Sessions Judge, Ferozepur, reduced the amount of maintenance to Rs 100/- per month on July 16, 1980. This revision arises out of the proceedings under S 127 of the Coda at the instance of the Petitioner for enhancement of the maintenance allowance to Rs. 200/- per month on account of the spiraling rise in prices and her sickness. The Respondent denied the grounds put forward by the Petitioner for seeking: enhancement of the maintenance and pleaded that he had to support his five children and being an asthmatic could not do any manual work. The learned trial Magistrate, however, enhanced the maintenance allowance to Rs 150/- p. m on January 31, 1983. Both the parties being dissatisfied with the said order, went up in revision. The learned Additional Sessions Judge, Ferozepur. while accepting the revision petition filed by Arjan Singh Respondent reduced the maintenance allowance to Rs. 100/- p m. and dismissed the revision petition of the Petitioner.

The main plank of the argument advanced on behalf of the Petitioner is that the learned Additional Sessions Judge had illegally and improperly ignored the weighty evidence of the Petitioner on flimsy grounds and had gone wrong in upsetting the order of the trial Court while observing that the grounds on the basis of which the increase was claimed did not amount to change of circumstances as provided in Section 127 of the Code. I must first of all point out that it is the settled practice of this Court not to interfere with the quantum of maintenance in revision which is awarded by the Court below unless it is so manifestly perverse that it requires interference. Now according to the learned Additional Sessions Judge, he had death with this aspect at considerable length and had taken pains to go through the entire relevant evidence and the conclusion reached was that the Petitioner had miserably failed to show that the income of the Respondent had undergone a change for the better. It has also been found as a fact that the Respondent himself is a patient of asthma and he has to support his five children. In this back ground I am afraid it is hardly open to the counsel for the Petitioner to reopen and repaginate this aspect. Be that as it may, the present revision petition is not maintainable in view of the bar u/s 397(3) of the Code.

The net result is that there is no ground to interfere with the order passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge and this revision petition is dismissed.