The Madras High Court has granted divorce to a couple on the ground that reluctance on the part of one of the spouses to have conjugal relationship at the very inception of the marriage, and when the couple is young and newly-wed, would amount to subjecting the other partner to mental cruelty.
Justices T. Raja and D. Bharatha Chakravarthy also held that wife’s act of levelling “unscrupulous and unsubstantiated” allegations of the husband being a drunkard, addicted to pornography, attempted to kill her by stacking cracker boxes under her bed and stole her jewellery, would also amount to subjecting the husband to cruelty.
The judges said such allegations, made without a shred of evidence, harm the reputation of the husband and affect his mental health and therefore he would be entitled to seek a decree of divorce. They pointed out that in the present case, the wife had also deserted her husband since 2011.
The Bench also stated that the wife had given evasive replies to the husband’s allegation of she having avoided conjugal relationship, on one pretext or the other, during the 90-day period when they lived together. Therefore, “we hold that the husband has successfully established the charge of cruelty,” it said.
