‘No bar on simultaneous proceedings’: Madras High Court

CHENNAI:  There is no bar on initiating simultaneous proceedings claiming maintenance under different Acts in two separate courts but the quantum of maintenance awarded in one case shall be intimated to the court where the other case is pending, the Madras High Court has said.

Quoting a Supreme Court order, Justice K Murali Shankar ruled last month that the position of law is well settled and that there is no bar or prohibition of initiating simultaneous proceedings claiming maintenance under different Acts, but while deciding the quantum of maintenance, the subsequent proceedings shall take into account the award made in the previous proceedings.

He made the ruling while dismissing a petition filed by Mohammed Siddiq seeking to quash a maintenance case filed by his wife Rasheeda Begum since she filed the same petition in two different courts in Tiruchy under two different Acts.

His counsel submitted that the family court in Tiruchy ought not to have taken the proceedings on its file when the respondent’s domestic violence complaint is already on the file of the additional Mahila court with similar and identical relief on the same set of allegations and cause of action.

The wife has suppressed the filing of the domestic violence complaint to approach the family court and it amounted to an abuse of the process of law, he said. The judge pointed out that the additional Mahila court has already disposed of the domestic violence complaint with an order of a maintenance amount, and said the parties must disclose this so the family court, which was directed to dispose of the matter within two months, takes it into account while further determining the maintenance amount.