Husband has means to pay maintenance; having Virat Kohli as brand ambassador of company proof: Delhi court

A plea by a man claiming he cannot pay interim maintenance to his estranged wife since he was without any income, was rejected by a Delhi court on the ground that the company where he worked as the Director has Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli as its brand ambassador, which showed that the petitioner-husband was a "man of means"..Additional Sessions Judge Anuj Agrawal was hearing the appeal of a man against an order of the trial court granting ₹30,000 maintenance to his estranged wife. He had challenged the order claiming he had “nil” income and lived on charity..The Court, however, found that he was a director of the company that manufactured a product promoted by the cricketer.“This court can take judicial notice of the fact that the brand ambassador of said brand is Virat Kohli, the test cricket captain of Team India. Therefore, it looks highly improbable that a company which is running into great losses (as claimed by appellant), was in a position to afford a celebrity of such stature for advertisement of its product,” it held.The wife's counsel had placed on record a wrapper of the product..Therefore, the husband was held to be a “man of means” having a large business and appeared to be “impersonating himself as a pauper” to defeat the "legitimate maintenance claim" of the estranged wife.The woman had alleged domestic violence against the husband claiming she had been living separately and did not have any means of livelihood..Her complaint filed under Section 12 of Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, sought various reliefs besides the interim maintenance. The trial court had granted her monthly maintenance while assessing the man’s monthly income to be ₹1 lakh.Upon the challenge, Judge Agrawal took into account the submissions from the disputing parties..The husband argued the woman was not entitled for maintenance as she was educated and having considerable income from her business.The woman, on the contrary, contended that her estranged husband’s income ran into millions. She alleged manipulation on his part to show he was not earning enough..The Court underlined a tendency to hide the true income by the parties in cases such as the one at hand. “It appears that in the instant case also, appellant/husband withheld his true income from the court. It cannot be believed that a person who was capable of supporting a family by getting married, would all of a sudden become devoid of all sources of income,” the Court observed..The order noted that once the monthly income of the husband had been assessed at ₹1 lakh per month, the interim maintenance of ₹30,000 cannot be “unjustifiable or exorbitant” by any stretch of the imagination.