In what was hailed as a verdict that enhanced Muslim women’s empowerment, the Supreme Court cleared the judicial cobwebs on their right to maintenance, saying they have the choice to seek remedy from their spouses under both secular and personal laws. Multiple Constitution bench rulings had made the same points in the past, yet the confusion persisted because of a bunch of subsequent contradictory rulings by various high courts.Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) that deals with maintenance of the wife, children and parents, is religion neutral and can be invoked by all women, including Muslim women, a bench of justices B V Nagarathna and Augustine George Masih ruled in separate but concurring verdicts. The bench was disposing of an appeal by Mohd Abdul Samad challenging a Telangana High Court order last year, which had modified a family court’s directive in 2019. The high court had lowered the interim maintenance payable by him to his divorced wife from Rs 20,000 per month to Rs 10,000 a month.The litigation After marriage on November 15, 2012, their relationship deteriorated and Samad’s wife left the matrimonial home on April 9, 2016. Subsequently, she initiated criminal proceedings against him on the grounds of cruelty and criminal breach of trust. Samad divorced her through triple talaq on September 25, 2017. A couple of months later, he was granted an ex parte divorce certificate under the Islamic law.Samad claimed he tried to send Rs 15,000 as maintenance for the iddat period (three months after divorce) mandated by the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, but his wife rejected it and moved a petition for interim maintenance under Section 125(1) of the CrPC before the family court. He questioned the maintainability of her petition under the secular CrPC, arguing the 1986 Act should apply in the case instead. Samad cited several case laws to argue that a special law like the 1986 Act supersedes the general CrPC in its application. While the 1986 Act limits the husband’s responsibility for alimony to the iddat, the secular law has no such ceiling.The court agreed with amicus curiae Gaurav Agrawal that remedy under a secular statutory provision of Section 125 of the CrPC is not foreclosed for a divorced Muslim woman through the enactment of a personal law under Section 3 of the 1986 Act to limit the extent of maintenance.
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