Maintenance Is For Subsistence, Not Wealth Accumulation: Raj HC Modifies Decade-Old DV Act Order, Quashes Rs 2 Lakh Compensation

Jaipur: The Rajasthan High Court has held that maintenance under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 is meant only to secure subsistence and not to operate as a money recovery suit, modifying an order so that maintenance runs from the date of the trial court’s judgment rather than from the date of the application filed nearly a decade earlier.

Justice Farjand Ali observed that maintenance arrears accumulated over more than a decade impose an unbearable and oppressive burden on a salaried employee, especially where systemic delay in adjudication cannot be attributed solely to the parties, and held that the ends of justice would be met by directing maintenance to run only from the date of the trial court’s order.

The Court remarked:

“Maintenance is neither punitive nor retributive in character. It is not intended to punish the husband for matrimonial discord nor is it designed to create a windfall or a mechanism for accumulation of wealth. The true rationale behind grant of maintenance is to ensure that the spouse, who lacks sufficient independent means, is not reduced to destitution, starvation, vagrancy or a life of helplessness. The object is to provide immediate financial succour and sustenance so that the claimant may maintain herself with basic dignity and survive the hardships arising out of matrimonial separation.”

The petition arose out of a criminal revision under Section 438 read with Section 442 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 by the husband Rakesh Sharma, who assailed an order of the Additional District Judge No. 2, Bikaner partly modifying a maintenance order passed by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate No. 4, Bikaner in proceedings under Section 12 of the DV Act instituted by his wife in November 2014.

The wife had alleged cruelty, harassment and dowry demand and sought protection, residence, maintenance and compensation. The trial court, after a decade of pendency, partly allowed the application on 27 February 2025, awarding Rs. 20,000 per month as maintenance, Rs. 5,000 towards accommodation and Rs. 2,00,000 as compensation for mental and physical harassment. The Additional District Judge in appeal modified the quantum to Rs. 10,000 per month for the period from the date of the application (18 November 2014) till the petitioner’s entry into government service on 16 August 2018, while affirming the remaining directions.

Counsel for the petitioner, Mr. Narendra Thanvi assisted by Mr. Mahendra Thanvi, submitted that the impugned orders suffered from patent illegality and perversity, that the allegations of cruelty were not substantiated by cogent evidence and that the wife had instituted false proceedings as a counterblast to the divorce petition filed by the petitioner. It was contended that prior to 2018 the petitioner had no stable source of income and that the direction to pay maintenance from the date of filing was arbitrary and excessive. The Public Prosecutor and counsel for the respondents opposed the submissions.

On the question of compensation, Justice Ali was of the view that the trial court’s direction to pay Rs. 2,00,000 towards alleged mental and physical harassment could not be sustained, since the underlying allegations of cruelty and harassment were already the subject matter of criminal prosecution initiated separately by the wife and were pending before the competent criminal court. Any categorical observation or grant of compensation founded upon those disputed allegations, the Court said, would virtually amount to pre-judging the controversy and may seriously prejudice the rights of either side in the pending prosecution.

The jurisdiction under the DV Act, the Court observed, is essentially remedial and protective in nature and cannot be stretched to convert the proceedings into a substitute for criminal adjudication, particularly when the allegations of cruelty are seriously disputed and pending trial. The DV Court was expected to confine itself to the limited factual position that the wife was legally wedded, was residing separately on plausible cause, and lacked sufficient independent means.

Turning to the question of retrospective arrears, the bench was disturbed by the peculiar fact that the maintenance proceedings instituted in November 2014 had remained pending for almost ten to eleven years, culminating in a direction fastening huge arrears from the date of the application on a salaried employee who entered government service only in 2018.

“A monthly maintenance amount may be manageable for a salaried person if paid periodically from his subsisting earnings. However, directing payment of arrears accumulated over more than a decade in one stroke creates an unbearable and oppressive financial liability, particularly when the delay in adjudication cannot be attributed solely to the petitioner,” the Court held.

Observing that the courts cannot remain oblivious to the practical realities of life, the bench held that such directions, instead of securing justice, “may push the person liable to pay into financial ruin and perpetual indebtedness.” The Court further reasoned that if a claimant has managed to sustain herself, survive and pursue litigation for a decade, the grant of huge retrospective arrears after that lapse cannot be said to advance the object of immediate sustenance but rather assumes the character of a monetary decree or financial compensation, which is beyond the scope of maintenance jurisprudence.

Disposing of the revision petition, the Court modified the trial court’s order to the extent that the petitioner shall pay Rs. 20,000 per month to the wife from 27 February 2025 — the date of the trial court’s order — and quashed the direction for payment of Rs. 2,00,000 towards mental cruelty. The order of the Additional District Judge No. 2, Bikaner directing payment of maintenance from the date of application till the petitioner’s entry into government service was set aside as wholly unreasonable, excessive and unsustainable in law. The Court clarified that any amount received by the wife under any other judicial proceeding shall be adjusted against the maintenance so directed.

Title: Rakesh Sharma v Manju Devi & Ors.

Case No.: S.B. Criminal Revision Petition No. 599/2025

Citation: [2026:RJ-JD:22423]

Counsel for petitioner: Mr. Narendra Thanvi, Mr. Mahendra Thanvi

Counsel for respondents: Mr. SriRam Choudhary, Public Prosecutor; Ms. Sarika Bishnoi