Courting blues

In the days of the Raj, the massive dilapidated building on Lucknow’s China Bazaar lane, named for some queer reason the American Library, was a recreation centre where British officers and their families got together to unwind. These days, couples turn up here by the dozen to sort out their marital discords.Family courts across Uttar Pradesh are struggling under a deluge of divorce cases as relationships are breaking down sooner than they are being forged and suspicions increase between couples. Set up to promote the welfare of families, family courts are ironically presiding over ever-increasing cases related to domestic violence, dowry, allegations of infidelity and inheritance claims. .preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}Sample this: the Lucknow family court has a pile-up of more than 13,000 cases with an average of 10 cases coming everyday; Allahabad’s two family courts have over 7,000 cases while the Gorakhpur family court gets five to six cases everyday.The long wait for justiceFormer president of the Lucknow Family Court Bar Association Padm Kirti, defending the delays, says cases take time because the courts want family disputes to be settled amicably.He adds that the bench and even bar members try to make warring couples understand that no religion or society favours divorce. Besides, the very philosophy behind the Family Courts Act 1984 was to protect and preserve the institution of marriage and to promote the welfare of children. Delays are the result of trying to provide for settlement of disputes by reconciliation. The Lucknow court lists about 250 cases for hearing every day but gets to hear barely 20. Despite detailed hearings, many women do not get adequate maintenance in divorce settlements and herein lies another lacuna in the system. Though the upper limit of maintenance has been increased from a paltry Rs 500 to Rs 5,000 every month, many husbands ignore the decree as there is no agency to enforce its provision. They often make a meagre one-time payment of Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 or tell their wives that they would forgo maintenance if they want the dowry back. The Family Court Act says that an appeal against its verdict can only be filed in the high court. Ironically, no appeal can be made against an order or decree if the family court had passed the order with the consent of the parties involved. And this usually happens in cases relating to maintenance of wives, children and parents under the Code of Criminal Procedure.Radha Shukla (name changed) had filed a maintenance case 18 years back when her daughter was only four. Her daughter is now married but Radha is still battling for maintenance. Another case is that of Sangeeta who was married to Raghu, a dairy shop owner in Haridwar. There was one habit of her husband which she could not tolerate— smoking. When she objected to this, he pushed her into the Ganga. She survived, filed a divorce case and was granted Rs 1,000 as maintenance.Raghu simply ignored the verdict but never got any court notice allegedly because the local police were hand in glove with him. Despite civil as well as criminal proceedings, despite intervention by senior police officers, notices have still not been served on Raghu because of non co-operation by the local police. Sangeeta is, meanwhile, bedridden.Family courts have other limitations too. They have little autonomy, no infrastructure to maintain records and no separate waiting halls for women except the common verandah in front of courtrooms. Besides, till recently the salary for the judges (who hold the rank of additional district judge) used to come from the district magistrate’s office and even the principal judge did not have the freedom to make petty purchases without the sanction of the district judge. However, things are improving after Chief Justice Hemant Rao Gokhle of the Allahabad High Court visited the Lucknow family court. He appointed two women judges and is now keen on developing the complex into a model family court.The court was in the news last year when it heard the case involving the then Inspector General of Police, a colourful D.K. Panda and his wife Veena. The officer, who claimed he was Krishna-devotee Radha, used to dress up as a woman and would attend the court in a yellow salwar-suit with a blue dupatta, a gold nose ring, vermillion, bangles and red lipstick. His wife won the case and got Rs 7,000 as monthly maintenance. Courthouse rapBacklog: Family courts have cases piling up as they spend time trying to reconcile couples. Shortage of judges adds to the delay in cases.Enforcement: Husbands get away by paying a lump-sum in divorce cases and do not pay maintenance.Infrastructure: There is no provision for maintaining records and no separate waiting halls for women.Autonomy: Little independence for judges in matters of salary and petty expenditure.But not all are as lucky as Veena and the courts get saddled with many bizarre cases. Kirti narrates one such case in which Lucknow executive Rajiv (name changed) came across an advertisement ‘Dosti Karo Ge’ (need a friend) and promptly sent an SMS.He ended up having a physical relationship with the woman he had sent the SMS to. She invited him to her “house” where he posed for photographs with her and her family members. Later, armed with the photographs, the woman started blackmailing Rajiv and when he refused to give in she filed a case for maintenance. The court threw out the case after it was discovered that the woman had similarly blackmailed other men too.To keep pace with the increase in cases, many counsellors have been hired at the Gorakhpur family court, says counsellor Anita Agrawal. Allahabad, on the other hand, is witnessing an increasing number of separation cases involving old couples. Lawyers blame ego clashes, rising distrust and the impact of television serials, which glamourise extramarital affairs, for causing disharmony and consequent breakups in families.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Dec 6, 2007--- ENDS ---

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Courting blues

With squabbles increasing in families, courts are getting clogged with cases relating to divorce, dowry, infidelity, inheritance and maintenance.

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