Rajiv Narain Raina, J. - (1.) The husband has petitioned this Court under Article 227 of the Constitution against an order passed by the learned District Judge, SBS Nagar, (Nawanshahr) under Section 24 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 ('HMA') awarding interim maintenance @ Rs. 10,000/- per month to his wife payable from the date of the order of 24th January, 2014. The amount has been made adjustable towards any order passed against the husband in any other litigation. There is a minor child born to the parties who is living with the mother in Punjab. The petitioner resides abroad. He has petitioned the matrimonial court for dissolution of marriage by grant of a decree of divorce under Section 13 of the HMA. The wife (respondent) claimed Rs. 20,000/- per month as pendente lite maintenance before the learned District Judge pleading that the husband earns wages in foreign currency equivalent to about Rs. 70,000/- per month. The husband pleads that he has purchased a 5 Marla property in the name of the wife by a sale deed registered executed in 2009 by him in her name. He has disclaimed liability to pay any maintenance towards the child under Section 24 of the HMA. He seeks reduction in the awarded amount. He probably labours under the impression that the transfer of property is sufficient discharge of his current and future liability. He does not deny that he resides abroad or that is not able bodied but says he is presently unemployed and is unable to maintain himself in the foreign country he lives. The wife has sold the property in 2012 for Rs. 2.45 lacs. The divorce petition has been filed through his brother Krishan Lal holding his brother's power of attorney for the purpose. The husband resisted the application in the divorce proceedings. He appears to this court to be wanting a divorce scot free while living abroad enjoying the luxury of litigation at his wife's expense with all the hard work done by his sibling brother perhaps not even caring to think what distress his wife must be going through to rear the child and to face the hardship of litigation. If he has made no candid disclosures of his income he earns in the foreign land what does he expect an Indian court to do for him, act only upon what he pleads without proof? The court is not helpless. In such a case, resort must be had to what in taxation laws is known as best judgment assessment. I would readily apply those beneficial, handy, rough-shod and time tested principles to matrimonial jurisdiction in cases of intentional non-disclosure of income and deliberate withholding of information by an NRI husband from his wife left behind in India with no lawful means possessed by her to retrieve information except to go by what the husband says. If the petitioner compels the court to draw a blank on his income then the court must act in aid of the deserted wife on the dictates of reason by applying the only available test left, that is, the rule of the thumb. Then to apply it tenaciously till such time as full disclosure is made and then to act accordingly. In absence of concrete evidence the court cannot simply say sorry to a wife and turn her back. The learned District Judge has done well in awarding the amounts. I may say that the internal revenue apparatus in modern foreign jurisdictions are known to be far too tough to hoodwink or for the Indian court to easily believe that employment or unemployment is not a recorded fact there.
(2.) Learned counsel argues that the trial Court has conjured up the income of the petitioner from god-knows-where on a facile presumption that the petitioner being an able bodied person living abroad must be assumed to be earning somewhere in the region of Rs. 40,000/- to 50,000/- per month. He contends that the wife has failed to produce any cogent evidence of the income of the husband. The argument is wholly misconceived and deserves rejection. The wife is apparently abandoned in India with child to care for as a forced single parent and conceivably could have no means of access to hard proof of income of her husband living in a foreign country which only he would have personal knowledge of, unless he shares information as a normal husband is expected to. Therefore, even if the rough rule of minimum wages earned by able bodied persons working abroad is inferentially drawn by the matrimonial court it has committed no illegality or perversity in reasoning. It was open to the husband to honestly plead and disclose his income for the court to have taken a view thereon and its impact on awardable interim maintenance.
(3.) This court does not perceive a palpable error of jurisdiction or any perversity in the conclusion reached by the learned District Judge, Nawanshahr to award reasonable maintenance @ Rs. 10,000/- per month and that too from the date of the order passed on 24th January, 2014 and not earlier which is commensurate with the cost of living index. A husband filing for divorce has to support his wife financially in a manner befitting his station (status ?) in life according to his status while residing in a foreign country. He has not given an opportunity to the court to consider this in his pleadings presented in the divorce proceedings.;