IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA C.R. No.191 of 2008 ANIL PRAKASH Versus MRS.SHOBHA KUMARI @ SOBHA DEVI ----------- 2. 11.9.2008 Heard counsel for the petitioner. In the opinion of this Court a direction to the petitioner husband to pay a sum of Rs. 2000/- per month by way of maintenance pendentilite under section 24 of the Hindu Marriages Act alongwith Rs. 5000/- by way of consolidated cost of litigation cannot be said to be either illegal or excessive. Counsel for the petitioner, however, has submitted that once this fact was admitted by the wife opposite party that the petitioner was unemployed the court below had to proceed on an assumption that the petitioner has no income. The two paragraphs of the deposition of the wife relied by the Counsel for the petitioner would only reveal that in cross-examination when she was confronted with the question as to whether she was aware of her husband employed or unemployed she claimed to be ignorant. However, on such statement of the opposite party wife, the petitioner could 2 not have made a premium because it was the definite statement of the wife in her application seeking interim maintenance that the husband was an Engineer and working in Gamon India Private Ltd. When the petitioner filed rejoinder to the same he did not deny first part that he was not an Engineer and what was denied that he was employed. It was never intended to be conveyed that as to no point of time he was employed in Gamon India Pvt. Ltd. That being so, if the court below had proceeded on a assumption of the petitioner being an Engineer and having family property and being only son, it cannot be said that a sum of Rs. 2000/- fixed by way of monthly maintenance is so patently absurd or excessive that needs to be interfered by this Court under section 115 C.P.C. Counsel then relied on the judgment of this Court in the case of Sanjay Kumar Jha vs. Premsheela Devi, reported in 2007(4) PLJR 125, to contend that there should be some evidence on the point of income. As disclosed above, the court has no only taken 3 the evidence on record but on the basis of totality of the circumstances gone to hold that the petitioner, an Engineer, even though claiming to be unemployed for the present cannot claim to be absolved his liability of maintaining his wife during the pendency of matrimonial case which actually has been thrust upon her by the husband- petitioner. This being so this Court would not find any applicability of the ratio of judgment in the case of Sanjay Kumar Jha (supra). Finally it was submitted by the counsel for the petitioner that the order which has been passed fixing the liability upon the petitioner to pay the amount of maintenance ought to have been from the date of the order and not from the date of the filing of the application under section 24 of the Act. In the opinion of this Court, this part of the submission is also fit to be rejected for a simple reason that the legislature under section 24 has not set out any restriction as in case of section 125 4 Cr.P.C. that payment of such amount has to be normally from the date of the order. In that view of the matter if the statute does not prescribe any limitation with regard to retrospectivity of the date of the order, this Court would not accept the submission of the counsel for the petitioner that the order which was passed on 12.12.2007 could not have been given a retrospective effect at least from the date of filing of the application i.e. 17.9.2004. The wife opposite party had been kept waiting for this amount of maintenance under section 24 from 17.9.2004 and therefore there was nothing wrong at least in allowing such prayer from the date of filing of her application. In view of what has been held above this Court would not find any merit in this application and the same is hereby dismissed. (Mihir Kumar Jha,J.) Surendra/