Calcutta High Court upholds husband’s right to seek divorce on ground of mental cruelty

KOLKATA: A division bench of the Calcutta High Court has upheld the right of a husband to seek divorce from his wife on ground of mental cruelty if the wife constantly abuses the husband by describing him as “coward” and “unemployed” and at the same time force him to get separated from his parents.

Hearing a matter related to a woman challenging a lower court order dissolving her marriage on the ground of mental cruelty against her husband, the division bench of Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Uday Kumar noted that as per Indian culture, the husband stays with his parents and there need to be some justifiable reason for the son to live separately.

In this particular case, a family court in West Midnapore district had dissolved the marriage in July 2001 after accepting the husband’s contention accusing his wife of mental cruelty. The woman had challenged that order at the Calcutta High Court in May 2009. On the issue of describing the husband as “coward” and “unemployed”, the court noted that it was because of a false complaint by the wife that the husband had lost his government job. The court also took note of some contents of the diary of the petitioner where she time and again described her husband as “coward” and “unemployed”.

In the diary, she had also made it clear a number of times that she was forced to marry him because of pressure from her parents. As per the court’s observation, the petitioner had also made it clear in the diary that she was more keen to get married elsewhere. In such cases, the marriage just remains a legal tie and hence tantamount to nothing but fiction, the court noted. After hearing the arguments, the division bench upheld the verdict of the family court dissolving the marriage in 2001. (IANS)