Delhi High Court: The Bench of Sanjeev Sachdeva, J. dismissed a revision petition filed by the husband against the judgment of the trial court whereby his application under Order 7 Rule 11 CPC impugning the proceedings filed by the wife on the ground of territorial jurisdiction was rejected.
Sanjay S. Chhabra with Satish Chaudhary, Advocates for the petitioner argued that the present application by the wife under Section 125 CrPC was not maintainable at Delhi because in all proceedings except the present one she had mentioned her residential address at Aligarh, U.P. Per contra, it was submitted on behalf of the wife by Saurabh Soni with Mannat Singh, Advocates that she was residing in Delhi with her brother since 2008.
The High Court perused Section 126(1) CrPC which deals with the place of the institution of proceedings under Section 125. It was observed, “Section 126(1) does not contemplate permanent place of residence. Even a place where the wife is for the time being residing would confer jurisdiction on such a court, where she is residing. However, residence temporarily acquired solely for conferring jurisdiction would not satisfy the requirements of Section 126(1).”In view of the law that wife can maintain a petition under Section 125 at any place where she is residing and the fact that she placed on record proof that reflected her address at Delhi, it was held that the trial court did not commit any error in rejecting husband’s application. The petition was dismissed for being without merit.[Sachin Gupta v. Rachna Gupta, 2019 SCC OnLine Del 6632, dated 21-01-2019]