In Brief
A wife's refusal to comply with a court decree requiring her to live with her husband does not automatically strip her of maintenance rights under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The Supreme Court held that whether maintenance should be granted must be determined case-by-case based on the wife's actual reasons for staying away. Here, the wife had valid grounds: her husband's callousness during her miscarriage, denial of basic facilities, and emotional neglect. Courts cannot simply rely on a restitution decree as conclusive proof; they must independently assess whether the wife had justifiable cause to refuse cohabitation.
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