The right to maintenance under S.125, CrPC is absolute and designed to ensure dignified living for spouses and children, despite claims of financial hardship by the husband.

1. Leave to amend Paragraph - 11.

It is extremely disheartening to adjudicate the dispute like the present one, where one finds the wife going from post to pillar for getting the amount of maintenance that she had been granted along with her minor daughter. The whole purpose and object of grant of maintenance under S.125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (for short, ' the Code - ) is to ensure that the wife and the children, who have suffered desertion and cruelty, live with dignity and are not to go begging for their right of livelihood.

1.1 It is also the settled position of law that the maintenance does not mean only the food and clothing but also means a lot more. Everything, that is required by of a person to live with grace and dignity get covered and that would also include a roof over the head.

1.2 It is found glaringly here the contention raised by the husband against grant of maintenance for the period when the wife did not make any separate application for recovery of the arrears of amount of maintenance , when, in fact, the wife was struggling to get the husband served in an application for getting arrears of 8 months of maintenance.

1.3 The chronology of events, in this case, would be necessary to be reproduced for this Court to adjudicate the disputes between the parties, who are spouses and who were married on 12.05.2003. A child was begotten out of the said wedlock within a very short span.

2. The wife filed an application under S.125 of the Code on 30.12.2004 being Criminal Misc. Application No. 1248 of 2004, seeking alimony for herself and the child both to the tune of Rs.5000/-and Rs.2000/- per month, respectively. However, the Court below granted a sum of Rs.1500/- and Rs.800/- per month to the mother and the child, totaling to Rs.2300/- per month vide order dated 12.07.2005.

3. It is not in dispute that the said order under S.125 of the Code is not challenged by the husband and the same has attained finality.

4. However, since, there was default in making the payment of amount of maintenance on the part of the husband, an application was moved by the wife to get the arrears of maintenance for a period of eight months, i.e. from 31.12.2004 to 30.08.2005. 4.1 At that stage, since, the Family Court came to be constituted at Rajkot City, the case was transferred to the Family Court and renumbered as Criminal Misc. Application No. 998 of 2008. Over the years, the summons could not be served upon the husband. It appears that warrant also came to be issued by the Court concerned, which also remained unserved. However, when neither the summons nor the warrants could be served upon the husband, Criminal Misc. Application No. 998 of 2008 came to be dismissed by the Family Court, Rajkot, for want of prosecution on 17.01.2012. The wife, therefore, moved an application for restoring Criminal Misc. Application No. 998 of 2008.

4.2 She, of course, on 25.07.2014 preferred an application under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 being Complaint No. 307 of 2014. In the said matter, the wife was granted an amount of Rs.2000/- per month towards maintenance vide order dated 21.10.2014.

5. Yet, another application being Criminal Misc. Application No. 439 of 2015 came to be preferred by the wife under S.125(3) of the Code, seeking to recover the maintenance for the entire period, i.e. from 01.09.2005 to 31.05.2015, coming to 117 months.

6. The application moved by the wife for restoring Criminal Misc. Application No. 998 of 2008, came to be allowed on 17.03.2016 so also her applicati