The family court here has asked a man to cough up Rs1.25 lakh as interim maintenance for filing a divorce suit alleging that his wife had committed adultery and the child was illegitimate. In this case, the husband had even sought for a DNA and RNA test to be conduced on the child.
The family court, however, found the allegations were false and instead slammed an interim maintenance of Rs1.25 lakh and asked him to provide a monthly maintenance of Rs10,000.
Priya R (name changed) had married Rudraprasad Shankar (name changed) on April 8, 2002 as per the Hindu rights. After marriage, Shankar, a lecturer in a city college, started living with his in-laws at Chamrajpet and contributed nothing towards family expenses.
As he was their son-in-law, Priya's parents suffered in silence and did not ask the couple to live separately. Priya claimed her parents had spent most of their savings on her marriage.
Her parents' silence only emboldened Shankar and he started ill-treating Priya. When she became pregnant, Shankar started pressurising Priya to terminate her pregnancy and did not even bother to foot her medical expenses.
Priya later gave birth to her son Kumar on January 10, 2003 and her family hoped this would mellow down Shankar. But, now he began eyeing their property (which was in his mother-in-law's name) and started pestering his wife and in-laws to transfer the same to his name.
Shankar even threatened that he will get married to another girl from a rich family if they did not comply with his demands. This time, however, the in-laws decided to put their foot down and refused to give in to Shankar's demands.
Shankar had deserted Priya on July 2002 and later filed for a divorce suit and subsequently Priya filed for maintenance. She had sought Rs20,000 as maintenance because as per her claim he was earning Rs18,000 as a lecturer and Rs35,000 by providing tuitions.
However, Shankar in his objections denied that he had deserted her or was ill-treating her. He also said that he and Priya had lived together for only 15 days and there was no consummation of marriage and Kumar was an illegitimate child and should be subjected to DNA and RNA tests.
The court did not accept Shankar's submission and held that Kumar was his child. It said that Shankar had paid Rs1000 to one of the witnesses in this case, when Priya underwent her first pregnancy test. It contended that if the child was not his, he would not have taken her for the test.
The court held that he has the moral responsibility and obligation to provide a reasonable maintenance of `10,000 per month, with an interim maintenance of Rs1.25 lakh.
It also gave the right to the petitioners to claim for separate maintenance as he had made incorrect allegation of adultery and of Kumar being his illegitimate child.
https://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_suspicion-costs-man-his-marriage-and-rs1-25-lakh_1624179
