Court grants maintenance to woman abandoned by husband

Dharna pays off

A woman, who has been sitting on dharna in the heart of the city since her husband abandoned her and their children in 2007, has been granted maintenance of Rs 3,000 by a Delhi court.

Sadhvi Bhagwati, a native of Pittoragarh in Uttarakhand, was awarded the monthly maintenance by metropolitan magistrate Navita Kumari, besides Rs 2,000 towards rent for accommodation.

“From material on record, it stands established that the respondent is husband of complainant and out of their wedlock three children are born and that the respondent has committed act of domestic violence upon her and that they are living separately since 2007. He has been neither paying anything towards maintenance of complainant or her two children nor providing them with any accommodation nor making any payment towards rent,” the court noted while fixing the maintenance.

The order of the court came on a petition moved by Sadhvi Bhagwati who has been sitting on a dharna at Parliament Street after her husband called her to Delhi from Uttarakhand and then left her on her own.

Bhagwati said she married Krishan Ram in 1996 and three children were born to them. She said Krishan did not take care of her and the kids and subjected her to domestic violence, following which she filed a case of domestic violence against him in Pithoragrah.

However, instead of appearing in that case, he sent her a money order of Rs 600 to join him in Delhi where he was working. Bhagwati said when she came to Delhi along with her three children, Krishan mischievously took away her elder daughter with him on September 16, 2007 on false pretext of shifting the house but never returned.

She said two days after her husband left, the landlord got the house vacated. Having nowhere to go and no money to return to Pithoragarh, she came on road and has been sitting on dharna since then.