Ch 8-2. Collecting wife’s earnings evidence, CrPC 91

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Using CrPC 91 to collect evidence from wife's workplace

CrPC 91 is a section which can be used to get details of wife's salary, appointment letter etc if you have some basic proof of wife's working status. As discussed earlier, this can be something as simple as her company business card, or her picture on Facebook with office colleagues. What you need to know is the name and address of the employer to whom this summons will be addressed.

The next hurdle is to convince the judge about the necessity of doing so in the interest of justice and equity. You should state that wife's working status and income is the crux of the issue in deciding whether she is unable to maintain herself, and if this opportunity is denied to you, you will be put to irreparable harm whereas it will cause no prejudice to your wife.

Following is Section 91 of CrPC.

Section 91. Summons to produce document or other thing

1. Whenever any Court or any officer in charge of a police station considers that the production of any document or other thing is necessary or desirable for the purposes of any investigation, inquiry, trial or other proceeding under this Code by or before such Court or officer, such Court may issue a summons, or such officer a written order, to the person in whose possession or power such document or thing is believed to be, requiring him to attend and produce it, or to produce it, at the time and place stated in the summons or order.

2. Any person required under this section merely to produce a document or other thing shall be deemed to have complied with the requisition if he causes such document or thing to be produced instead of attending personally to produce the same.

3. Nothing in this section shall be deemed-

i. to affect, sections 123 and 124 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (1 of 1872), or the Bankers, Books Evidence Act, 1891 (13 of 1891), or

ii. to apply to a letter, postcard, telegram or other document or any parcel or thing in the custody of the postal or telegraph authority.

One person recently asked me this question: "how to convince judge to ask bank for wife's bank statement". My understanding of court procedures and how judges work tells me that they are not very much inclined to delay things based on speculative issues raised. Unless you show some proof, maybe even a photocopy of bank statement of wife, judge may think that this is a fruitless and delaying exercise because what would be the result if the court got the statement from the bank, but there was nothing in the statement to indicate that she was getting some salary deposited every month? So unless you are able to show a good possibility of evidence which may result from CrPC 91, the court may deny the request.

What is very common is that courts will easily issue a CrPC 91 on husband's employer if he doesn't produce his own salary slip or income details. So the courts are geared to find out whether maintenance should be given and if yes, how much. They are not deeply interested in finding out the whole truth behind wife's statements about her working status etc.

CrPC 91 format

This is a sample application under Sec 91 of CrPC (Code of Criminal Procedure) to get salary slip and employment details of a working wife who has filed either a CrPC 125 or DV case to claim maintenance.

You can modify this based on your case whether it is for DV or maintenance case u/s 125 CrPC You need to fill the name and employer details.

IN THE COURT OF ____ A.C.M.M., DELHI

Name of the Petitioner ..... Petitioner
Versus
Name of the Accused ..... Accused/(Respondent in case of CMis)

Application U/s 91 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The Respondent(s) above named submits as follows:

1. The Petitioner has filed an application under the provision _______ (may be D.V/CrPC 125) by making false allegations.

2. The Petitioner is employed/working in ______ (name of the company). The petitioner has suppressed/not provided the salary/employment details.

3. That since the petitioner is claiming maintenance when she is having (high) income which she is not disclosing, hence the respondents seek the necessary orders from this Hon'ble Court for seeking summons
for production of the documents from the relevant persons in custody of the same.

4. The documents sought to be summoned are essential and necessary to decide the dispute in the present petition.

5. The documents so sought to be summoned are:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the interest of justice and equity.

Place:_________

Date: _________ Advocate for Respondent.

How to collect evidence of wife's work status etc?

We have already discussed how CrPC 91 can be used to collect more details of wife's employment if one has some basic proofs.

However, a problem raised often by many men is how to collect even basic proofs?

Unfortunately, answer to this question cannot be found in any manual. If one has the will, one can find ways to find the information. Like I mentioned before, one of good ways is to be aware and be in contact with other men who are facing these cases. On MRI site itself, we have communities both on Whatsapp as well as on Facebook where many men interact with one another about their issues.

Most of the time, I feel it's more about conviction about knowing what course of action one wants to take. There are always ways to find the information, as one person from Gujarat has set by his example:

Gujarat HC allows examining account books of wife's employer in maintenance case

The person above faced a hurdle that even his video recording of wife working at employer's place was being discredited. But he had the conviction to appeal to Gujarat high court to make sure the right order got passed.

I think that is an important ingredient which makes the difference between success and failure. Don't listen to anyone including your own lawyer's advice that so and so evidence is not useful. Produce it in court with conviction, and don't believe anyone's word except the judge's whether it is useful or not.

Whether to use detectives?

This question has been asked many a time, and I know many husbands who have actually used detectives. But so far I haven't come across any case where a husband said that he got a great piece of evidence by using a detective's services. On the other hand, I have seen many examples where people got great evidence of wife's working status by using simple tools like RTI(Right to Information). So in the end, I think that even if one uses a detective, one should define some clear goals for him to achieve and pay according to results. Easier said than done, given some stories heard that the detective will collude with the other party, most probably taking some money from them too. Nevertheless, I would suggest one to use a simple results based payment if one uses detectives:

Copy of wife's income tax return: Rs 5000
Copy of wife's appointment letter: Rs 2500
Photo of wife entering or leaving a workplace: Rs 1000

Ask wife to give affidavit that she is not working

This is a technique which can be put to good use, and which most people may not be aware of. Let's say that your wife denies that she is working anywhere, and you know that she is working at XYZ company, but as yet you have been unable to collect the proof.

The interim maintenance (or even final order) is about to be decided. In this situation, you have perfect knowledge of her working status, but nothing documentary to produce in front of court.

What you can try is: Ask the court that wife should state in an affidavit that she is not working anywhere as of current date. Then you are ready to pay maintenance amount whatever is awarded.

This may seem like counter-intuitive. The intention here is not to say that I am willing to pay maintenance, but that I want wife's statement to be on an affidavit. Especially during interim orders, things are decided based on husband's salary slip, court drama, verbal arguments etc. Wife's allegations are not produced on an evidence affidavit at that time. So one will not be able to file perjury on those statements even if one can prove them to be lies later on.

With an affidavit on record, husband can file perjury under CrPC 340 on wife at a later time when he gets the documentary evidence of wife's working status/income etc. A perjury application is one of the best ways to bring opponents to their knees and close all cases without any alimony, however given the fact that the divorce industry also understands all these things, they try to keep things at interim orders and wives simply stop coming to court at evidence stage after getting the interim maintenance order. So you can use this technique to push the right buttons in the system, which may yield results at a later time.

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