The Supreme Court reiterated that nomenclature of a petition is immaterial and for doing substantive justice, the High Court can always convert a petition under Section 482 CrPC to a revision under Section 397 CrPC and vice versa.

The Apex Court was considering an appeal assailing a judgment of the Jabalpur Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court whereby a wife’s petition under Section 482 CrPC seeking enhancement of interim maintenance was dismissed.

The Division Bench comprising Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Sandeep Mehta held, “The approach of the High Court in dismissing the petition filed by the appellant under Section 482 CrPC on the hyper technical ground that she had to avail the remedy of revision cannot be appreciated because the same has unnecessarily compelled the appellant to approach this Court by way of this appeal filed under Article 136 of the Constitution of India.”

Advocate Vatsal Joshi represented the Appellant.

The Principal Judge, Family Court in exercise of powers under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) had fixed interim maintenance in favour of the appellant. Being dissatisfied with the quantum of interim maintenance, the appellant wife filed a petition under Section 482 CrPC in the High Court seeking enhancement. The said petition was dismissed by the High Court by the order impugned on the ground that it was not maintainable as the appellant wife had a remedy of a revision under Section 397 CrPC.

On the legal aspect of the case, the Bench said, “This Court has, in a catena of decisions, provided that nomenclature of a petition is immaterial and for doing substantive justice, the High Court can always convert a petition under Section 482 CrPC to a revision under Section 397 CrPC and vice versa.”

Reference was also made to the judgment in Prabhu Chawla v. State of Rajasthan and Another(1977) wherein it has been observed that availability of alternative remedy of criminal revision under Section 397 CrPC, by itself, cannot be a good ground to dismiss an application under Section 482 CrPC.

“Viewed in light of the above precedents, we feel that even if the High Court was of the view that the appellant should have invoked the jurisdiction under Section 397 CrPC for seeking enhancement of interim maintenance, it ought not to have non­suited the appellant only on the ground of alternative remedy”, it said.

The Bench, thus, disposed of the Appeal by setting aside the impugned order of the High Court and remanding the matter to the High Court with further direction to convert the petition under Section 482 CrPC as a criminal revision under Section 397 CrPC and decide it in accordance with law.

Cause Title:Akanksha Arora v. Tanay Maben (Neutral Citation: 2024 INSC 962)

Appearance:

Appellant: Advocates Vatsal Joshi, Gurdeep Wadhwa, AOR Akshay Amritanshu, Advocates Swati Mishra, Pragya Upadhyay, Drishti Saraf

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