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8. It is first submitted by learned counsel for Petitioner that under Section 125 (4) CrPC no order for interim maintenance can be passed if the Court is satisfied that the wife is, "without any sufficient reason"

refusing to live with her husband. It is submitted that in the instant case, although the Petitioner has always been willing to take back Respondent No.1, it is she who has been unreasonably refusing to come back to the matrimonial home.

9. This argument is without merit. At the outset it requires to be noticed that the above argument would be relevant, if at all, only in the context of the grant of interim maintenance to Respondent No.1 wife. In fact, the Petitioner offers no justification whatsoever for not paying till date any interim maintenance to the child as directed. The learned MM while deciding the question of payment of interim maintenance to a wife is only expected to form a prima facie opinion whether such wife was staying away from the husband without any sufficient reason. If the argument of the Petitioner has to be accepted then it is only after the entire evidence is led that an order for interim maintenance can be passed. That would defeat the very purpose of providing for payment of interim maintenance in Section 125. What the learned MM is required to determine at the stage of grant of interim maintenance is to be prima facie satisfied, on the basis of the pleadings and any other material on record, that the wife has not stayed away from the husband without sufficient reason. Applying such yardstick, it cannot be said that in the instant case the respondent No.1 wife stayed away from the husband without sufficient reason. On the other hand, even on the petitioner‟s own showing, she came back to the matrimonial home after two attempted compromises, both of which unfortunately did not last long. Without at this stage determining which of the parties was responsible for the situation in which they were unable to stay together, it is held that the pleadings do not prima facie show that the Respondent No.1 stayed away from the husband without sufficient reason. This submission of the learned counsel for the Petitioner is therefore rejected.

14. The petitioner questions the device of an execution petition before the learned MM as being without the authority of law and with no statutory backing of the CrPC. While it is true that the legislature has not provided for a separate execution proceedings to enable the wife in whose favour an order of interim maintenance has been passed to get the said order implemented, the provision contained in Section 125 (1) CrPC indicates that the learned MM is expected to keep the proceedings pending before that court for the purpose. In Section 125 (1) CrPC the words used are:" ...a Magistrate ...may, upon proof of such neglect or refusal, order such person to make a monthly allowance...at such monthly rate ...as the Magistrate may from time to time direct." A similar expression is used in the second proviso to Section 125 (1) CrPC in the context of interim maintenance. The expression "from time to time" is intended to enable the Magistrate to monitor the implementation of the orders passed by the learned MM including the orders awarding interim maintenance. That is the only way that the orders awarding interim maintenance can be expected to be implemented. Otherwise, an unscrupulous husband will be under no pressure of compliance despite suffering an adverse order. To regale such a remedy to the wife will defeat the very purpose of the provision. Therefore the objection raised by the petitioner husband on the ground of lack of jurisdiction in the learned MM to entertain an execution petition is without merit and is rejected as such.

15. The other phenomenon that requires to be discouraged is that a mere filing of a revision petition by a husband against an order granting interim maintenance to the wife and/or child is construed as an implied stay of that order. As a result the wife has to wait for an even longer period for the implementation of the order in her favour. The method that should be deployed to overcome this hurdle is for the revisional court to insist that the husband‟s revision petition will not be entertained till such time the husband against whom the order of interim maintenance has been passed, deposits the entire arrears of interim maintenance up to date in terms of the said order of the learned MM in the court of the learned ASJ. Otherwise the husband will be able to indefinitely postpone the implementation of the orders of interim maintenance by driving the wife from one court to another without her receiving any payment whatsoever. This only compounds the agony of the wife and serves to defeat the interest of justice. This situation ought not to be allowed to continue if justice in the real sense should be done to an Indian wife who is in dire straits and unable to survive with her child for want of economic means of subsistence. Given the huge pendency of work in the courts of the learned MM, an application under Section 125 CrPC is unable to be disposed of within a year. Even an order of interim maintenance is able to be passed only after a year.

In our view the interim maintenance applications in matrimonial disputes ought to be disposed of with dispatch and certainly should not take in any event more than 1 year at the highest. The very purpose of interim maintenance is defeated if it takes about 3 years, as in the present case as an interim application for maintenance filed on 23rd May, 2003 came to be disposed of only on 16th February, 2006. We therefore direct that all the Courts in Delhi, therefore, must keep the need for urgent disposal of such applications in mind, and ensure the disposal of the interim maintenance applications within one year from the date of filing of such applications in matrimonial matters."