The court upheld the dismissal of a maintenance claim, recognizing the respondent's incapacity due to mental illness despite property ownership.

ORDER

This Revision Petition is filed by the petitioners challenging the order dated 23.12.2016 in M.C. No.125/2015 on the file of the Family Court, Kannur. The claim petition was filed for maintenance to the minor children of the respondent. The Family Court dismissed the claim petition mainly for the reason that the respondent is suffering from mental illness and he has no source of income. Aggrieved by the same, this Revision Petition is filed.

2. Heard the learned counsel appearing for the petitioners and the learned counsel appearing for the respondent.

3. Counsel appearing for the petitioners submitted that, even though the respondent is suffering from mental illness, he has property and the children have a right over that property.

4. The counsel appearing for the respondent submitted that the petitioner is still admitted in the hospital due to his mental illness.

5. This Court perused the impugned order. It will be better to extract the relevant portion of the impugned order:

“7. Points 1 & 2:- There is no dispute with regard to the marriage and paternity of the minor petitioners. The minor petitioners are now residing with their mother who is a Nurse of Government Hospital. The respondent is staying with his parents separately from the petitioners. Admittedly the petitioners who are students have no independent source of income and they are now depending upon their mother. So in normal case the respondent being the father of the petitioners is liable to provide maintenance to them. Here the respondent would contend that since he is a mentally ill person is incapable of doing permanent job and to earn money. It is further contended by the respondent that since he does not have sufficient means to provide maintenance to the petitioners there cannot be an order compelling him to pay maintenance to the petitioners. In order to support his contention the respondent has examined RW2 Doctor and marked as Exts.B1 to B5 medical documents. RW2 Doctor who is a Psychiatrist attached to department of Psychiatry Kannur Medical College would depose that he treated the respondent for more than two occasions and prescribed medicines to him. Exts.B1 and B5 are the two prescriptions issued by him. Exts.B2 to B4 prescriptions issued by some other Doctors were also shown to RW2. According to RW2 the respondent is suffering from Bipolar disorder type two. The medicines prescribed in Exts.B2 to B4 also are the medicines which are generally prescribed for Bipolar disorder. RW2 further would depose that Bipolar disorder is both depression and hypo mania which is a continuous disorder. The said illness is depentent on climate. In hot condition there will be hypo mania and cold climate patient may have depression. The patient requires medicine and even hospitalization during depressive episode. During the depression without motivation, the patient will not do any activity. During hyper maniac stage there may be lack of concentration to the patient. According to the counsel for the petitioners, the respondent is a habitual user of narcotic drugs and he might have misguided the doctor after using narcotic substance and managed to obtain the medical documents. But when the above case was suggested to RW2, he specifically denied the same. 8. The evidence of RW2 coupled with Exts.B1 to B5 is sufficient to probabalise the claim of the respondent that due to mental illness he is incapable of doing any permanent job. It is true that RW1 in his cross-examination has admitted that he is a ITI mechanical certificate holder and used to do occasional repair work of various electronic gadgets. But the above mentioned admission mad