LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) has observed that under section 17(A) of the West Pakistan Family Courts Act, 1964, a family court shall issue a decree on a suit for maintenance allowance straightaway if a defendant fails to pay interim maintenance so fixed. The court held that the right of any litigant cannot be allowed to interfere in the dispensation of justice, especially in a manner so as to endorse his repeated defiance of valid orders passed against him.

The high court issued these observations in a petition of one Naveed Akhtar, who failed not once but twice on the same count and tried to avoid and wriggle out of the liability so imposed.

The court said the social, legal and religious responsibilities of the petitioner also bind him to support his own biological daughters, provide for their maintenance, and to do so in a respectable way.

Seen from whichever angle the petition in question merits to be dismissed since the judgments under challenge are unexceptionable. Therefore, the petition is dismissed, the court ordered.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022