A man’s claim that he couldn’t pay interim maintenance to his estranged wife because he didn’t have any income was rejected by a Delhi court on the grounds that the company where he works as the Director has Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli as its brand ambassador, demonstrating that the petitioner-husband was a “man of means.”
Additional Sessions Anuj Agrawal was hearing an appeal from a man against a trial court order awarding Rs 30,000 maintenance to his estranged wife, Bar and Bench reported.
He had challenge the order, claiming he had “nil” income and relied solely on charity. The Court, on the other hand, determined that he was a director of a company that manufactured a product promoted by the cricketer.
“This court can take judicial notice of the fact that the brand ambassador of said brand is Virat Kohli, the test cricket captain of Team India. Therefore, it looks highly improbable that a company which is running into great losses (as claimed by appellant), was in a position to afford a celebrity of such stature for advertisement of its product,” the bench said, according to the report.
The product’s wrapper had been placed on the record by the wife’s counsel.
As a result, the husband was deemed to be a “man of means” with a large business who appeared to be “impersonating himself as a pauper” in order to defeat the estranged wife’s “legitimate maintenance claim.”
The woman had accused her husband of domestic violence, claiming she had been living separately and had no means of support.
Aside from interim maintenance, her complaint, filed under Section 12 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, sought a variety of other reliefs. The trial court granted her monthly maintenance while estimating the man’s monthly income to be one lakh rupees.
Judge Agrawal considered the submissions of the disputing parties when deciding on the challenge.
The husband argued that the woman was not entitled to maintenance because she was educated and made a good living from her business. The woman, on the other hand, claimed that her estranged husband’s income was in the millions. She accused him of deception in order to demonstrate that he was not earning enough.
The Court emphasised the parties’ proclivity to conceal their true income in cases like this one. “It is difficult to believe that a person who was capable of supporting a family by marrying would suddenly lose all sources of income,” the Court observed.
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