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Basant,J.

(i) Does a divorce valid under the Muslim Law ipso facto extinguish the liability of the husband under Sec.125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (hereinafter referred to as `the Code') to pay maintenance to his wife even when it is admitted or proved that amounts due under the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 (hereinafter referred to as `the Act') have not been paid?

(ii) Is unilateral pronouncement of divorce without offering any reason and without any attempt for reconciliation by the arbiters as mandated by Ayat 35 of Sura IV of the Holy Quran valid under the Muslim Law after the decision of the Supreme Court in Shamim Ara v. State of U.P. (2002 (3) KLT 537 SC)?

7. The learned Judge of the Family Court, on an anxious consideration of all the relevant inputs, came to the conclusion that the alleged divorce has not been proved satisfactorily. No reasonable cause having been shown in the communication of talaq and no attempts for reconciliation by the arbiters having preceded the pronouncement of talaq, the alleged talaq is not valid and cannot be recognised as valid in the light of the dictum in Shamim Ara (supra), held the learned Judge of the Family Court. It was hence held that the order directing payment of enhanced maintenance is liable to be enforced. Accordingly, Crl.M.P.No.1006/04 was allowed as per the impugned order.

8. The learned counsel for the revision petitioner Sri. K.P. Sudheer contends that under the Muslim Law, a husband can exercise his prerogative to terminate the matrimony by unilateral pronouncement of talaq without assigning any reason. The Muslim Law does not oblige him to reveal reasons. In fact, the humanist stipulations in the Muslim Law do not oblige him, and do actually discourage him, from revealing the reasons. Non- revealing of reasons cannot, at any rate, be held to vitiate the divorce effected. It is submitted that the husband has valid reasons to divorce his wife. Actually the spouses were residing separately from early eighties and it was only reasonable and just to invoke the power to terminate such a dead matrimony which remains only in the eye of law and not actually. The learned counsel further contends that the Muslim Personal Law - the Quranic injunctions, the Sunnahs or the Ijtihads do not catalogue what reasons are reasonable and what reasons are not reasonable. The legislature or the courts have not intervened to prescribe what reasons can be reckoned as reasonable and what as not reasonable. The learned counsel hence argues that reasonability of the causes for divorce is not justiciable. It would be dangerous and impermissible to leave it to the individual Judges without guidelines to decide what causes would be reasonable and what causes will not be reasonable. In these circumstances, the dictum in Shamim Ara (supra) properly understood cannot lead a court to the conclusion that reasonableness of the substantive cause of divorce is justiciable, argues the counsel. Consequently, the husband is not liable to reveal reasons or justify and substantiate those reasons.

43. The learned counsel for the revision petitioner contends that the court below erred in not accepting his plea that the marriage has been dissolved. Though there has been meek acceptance by the system that the husband has the prerogative to unilaterally liquidate the marriage for good, bad or indifferent reasons and such divorce will be perfectly valid whether he has done it under compulsion or in jest or in anger, winds of change have started blowing and the Supreme Court in Shamim Ara (supra) has without the trace of any doubt declared that this view is not acceptable to the court in the present time. We feel that it would be advantageous to extract the relevant passages in paragraphs-13 and 14 of the decision in ShamimAra (supra):