The Supreme Court has ruled that “persistent refusal of sexual intercourse” and “conjugal rights” by either spouse amounts to “cruelty”, which is a valid ground for divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act.
The court dissolved the marriage of a doctor couple. While the husband worked in Rajasthan, the wife was posted in Gujarat.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Augustine George Masih passed the judgment while dismissing the appeal filed by the wife, who had challenged the judgment of Rajasthan High Court granting divorce to the husband by setting aside a decree passed by a family court rejecting his plea.
The man had alleged that his wife had abandoned him and denied him
“conjugal bliss” by choosing to station herself in Gujarat for the past 15 years. The Rajasthan-based man had pointed out the couple had no children. The couple had spent only a few months together in the past 15 years, the husband alleged.
The woman argued that she had never abandoned her husband and was willing to stay with him and had also shifted to Rajasthan.
Dismissing the wife’s appeal, Justice Masih observed: “However, on the question of cruelty from the evidence of the respondent-husband it also comes out that even during that short period of cohabitation, the appellate-wife used to sleep early at night, lock her room from inside and never open the door on knocking. The respondent-husband used to sleep in a separate room. The appellant-wife has not denied the fact that they used to sleep in different rooms. The acceptance of the grounds of cruelty for grant of divorce is, thus, correct.”
The bench said that persistent withdrawal from the foundational aspects of marriage may have legal consequences while evaluating allegations of mental cruelty.