The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has ruled that the Judicial Magistrate has powers to provide interim relief to a child and its mother if they were neglected by the person who was supposed to take care of them.
The Nilakottai Judicial Magistrate in Dindigul district had ordered a businessman to pay an interim monthly maintenance of Rs. 2,500 each to his wife and daughter.
Justice S Vimala of the HC partly allowed the criminal revision petition filed by the businessman and confirmed the order only with respect to the payment to be made to the child. She said the maintenance for wife could be suspended and given while issuing the final order.
Sometimes there was an inordinate delay in disposal of main petitions seeking maintenance, the judge said, adding such a situation could be avoided if ex parte interim maintenance orders were passed in all cases except in those in which applicants were prima facie disqualified from claiming maintenance.
Granting maintenance was a measure of social justice, intended to prevent the vagrancy of destituteness. A child should not be denied instant justice at any cost, the judge said.
The husband had filed a petition in the family court for restituion of conjugal rights.
The magistrate felt that the husband had not taken any effective steps to take back the wife, except filing the petition for restitution of conjugal rights, hence the order of the magistrate could not be set aside.
The judge, quoting poet Gabriela Mistral, said "many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer 'tomorrow,' his name is today."
Directing the petitioner to provide interim relief for the child, the judge said that in this case the father was liable to maintain his daughter. The liability was absolute for daughter. Hower in the case of his wife, the justifiability of her to live away from her husband was the main issue and it had to be decided.
