'It seems Kali Yug has arrived,' says Allahabad HC judge as elderly couple fights legal battle over alimony

Lucknow: A legal battle between a couple in their eighties over the amount of alimony prompted the judge before whom the matter came up for hearing to remark that the ‘Kali Yug’ (a Sanskrit term referring to the fourth and final age of the Hindu cycle, also known as the age of downfall and is described as a time of darkness, vice, misery, quarrel and hypocrisy) appears to have arrived.

‘’It seems Kali Yug has arrived,’’ Justice Sourav Shyam Shamsheri remarked while hearing the petition filed by 80-year old Munesh Kumar Gupta challenging the decision of the family court directing him to pay Rs five thousand to his wife Gayatri Devi as alimony.

Justice Shamsheri, while posting the matter for further hearing at a later date, expressed hope that the couple would come to court on the next date with some constructive compromise.

Munesh, who was a retired fourth class employee in the health department, said in his petition that he had purchased a house in 1981 in the name of his wife. The dispute started after his wife gifted the house to his younger son in 2008.

The differences between Munesh and his wife forced the latter to leave the house and live with his elder son in a rented accommodation.

The wife moved the family court seeking alimony from Munesh. The family awarded Rs five thousand as alimony to her.

Munesh pleaded that he and his elder son were forced out of the house and that even after that he used to pay Rs two thousand every month to his wife from his pension of a little of Rs 14 thousand.