Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has held that denying physical intimacy to a husband and making allegations of an extra-marital affair constitute cruelty, and are valid grounds for divorce.
A bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Neela Gokhale, while dismissing a woman’s plea challenging a family court’s divorce decree, observed that her conduct amounted to “cruelty” against her husband.
“Refusal to have a physical relationship and making allegations of extra-marital relations is cruelty by the appellant (woman),” the court noted.
The woman had moved the high court challenging a 2015 Pune family court order which granted divorce to her husband on grounds of cruelty. She also sought a direction for her husband to pay her Rs one lakh per month as maintenance.
The couple had married in 2013 but began living separately from December 2014. The husband had cited multiple instances of cruelty in his divorce petition — denial of physical intimacy, being falsely accused of infidelity, and being humiliated in front of his friends, employees, and family.
“The appellant’s (woman) behavior with the man’s employees is sure to cause agony to him. Similarly, humiliating the man in front of his friends is also cruelty to him,” the bench remarked.
He also alleged that she was indifferent and apathetic towards his specially abled sister, which the court noted would “cause pain to the man and his family members.”
The woman, on her part, claimed she was harassed by her in-laws but continued to care for her husband and did not wish for the marriage to end. However, the court found no merit in her arguments and said that she had deserted him when she left his home to live with her parents.
Further, the judges added, "For more than a decade, the parties have been living separately. The marriage does not survive any longer and the relationship is terminated and confirmed as such legally as well, by the Family Court. This appeal simply continues the status quo awaiting an order of this Court."
Dismissing her plea, the HC concluded that the marriage was “broken without any possibility of being mended.”
