New Delhi: Information obtained through an RTI application has spoiled an estranged wife’s chances of collecting alimony from her husband.

The Right to Information (RTI) application was filed by the husband, who — through the Act’s transparency clauses — was able to prove before a city court that his wife could not be eligible for maintenance because she earned, and was not unemployed as she had claimed before the law.

In the final chapter of this bitter battle, the sessions court threw out the woman’s petition, declaring she did not require alimony — that she could support herself and her infant daughter through her earnings. The court also observed that she had withheld this fact from a lower court, and this only came to light after the husband filed the RTI application.

The husband, by using the provisions of the Act, found that the woman worked as a commission agent in a post office agency — a public body that looked after a district’s small-savings schemes. In this case, RTI could help because she worked in a government agency.

The story goes back to 2008, when the woman filed a petition before a magistrate alleging her husband had driven her out and that she had no job to support her or her daughter. She had said she was completely dependant on the husband. During the hearing, the husband tried to convince the court that his wife had a job, and hence, needed no maintenance. However, he failed to produce any document to buttress his claim. The magistrate subsequently allowed the woman’s petition and directed him to pay Rs 6,000 every month.

The man then filed an application under the provisions of the RTI Act. The findings helped him to discredit her claim. Armed with the RTI response, he moved the court again under the Code of Criminal Procedure. The magistrate, this time, favoured his stand, and cancelled the order for alimony.

But the woman approached the session’s court and claimed there had been no change in her circumstances since the money from the agency went to her mother. The husband contested this revised petition and held up before the judge his RTI findings.

Accepting the document as valid evidence of the woman’s income, the court said: “In these circumstances, it has to be held that the petitioner herein concealed the fact of her income and obtained order of maintenance in her favour.”