Wife’s love for another man without physical relationship not adultery: Court
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Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh High Court rejected a husband’s argument that his wife was not entitled to receive maintenance claiming she was in love with somebody else.
Justice G S Ahluwalia made it clear that a wife’s love and affection for someone, other than her husband, is not adultery unless she is in a physical relationship with that person, The Indian Express reported.
The court held that ‘adultery necessarily has to involve sexual intercourse’.
The husband filed revision petition against a family court order that directed him to pay his wife an interim maintenance of Rs 4,000.
The court said that ‘Even if a wife is having love and affection towards somebody else without any physical relations, then that by itself cannot be sufficient to hold that the wife is living in adultery’.
Dismissing his argument of meager income as a ground for not paying maintenance, the court observed that ‘Meager income of the husband cannot be a criteria to deny maintenance. If the applicant has married a girl knowing fully well that he is not competent to even fulfil his own daily needs, then for that, he himself is responsible but if he is an able bodied person then he has to earn something to maintain his wife or to pay the maintenance amount.’