Abuse, threat by wife ground for divorce: Supreme Court

Abuse, threat by wife ground for divorce: SC

Dhananjay Mahapatra
[ 22 Feb, 2007 0047hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: In probably the first case of its
kind, a husband sought divorce from his wife on
the ground of mental cruelty.
The latter was convicted by the trial court for
murdering their three children, threatening to
lodge false cases against her husband and even
going to the extent of threatening to kill him.
On the day of her conviction by the trial court in
Rajasthan, she threatened her husband with dire
consequences. As she was pregnant at that time,
she was granted bail and while on bail, she filed
dowry harassment cases against her husband,
which the police after investigation certified as
false.
These are enough grounds for the husband to
seek divorce and the civil court as well as the
Jodhpur Bench of Rajasthan High Court rightly
granted him a divorce decree, the Supreme Court
said on Wednesday dismissing her appeal
challenging the HC order.
Narrating the agonisingly excruciating
experience of living with the woman after
marriage in 1993, the man said she used to keep
up the children with ropes and even attempted to throw them down from the rooftop while
threatening him that she would wipe out his entire family.
On April 5, 2002, she left home with the three children to visit her parental home in the same
village. After a search, the bodies of the children were recovered from the village well and the
woman was also brought out from it.
The physical and mental torture, the threat on the day of her conviction and the false cases
filed against her husband while on bail were the grounds that weighed on the mind of the court
in granting divorce to him.
Laying down a general guideline for courts dealing with petitions seeking divorce on the
ground of cruelty, an apex court Bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and Dalveer
Bhandari said it must be something more serious than "ordinary wear and tear of married life".
"To constitute cruelty, the conduct complained of should be grave and weighty so as to come
to the conclusion that the petitioner spouse cannot be reasonably expected to live with the
other spouse," said Justice Pasayat, writing for the Bench.
Petty quibbles, trifling differences should not be exaggerated and magnified to destroy what is
said to have been made in heaven, the Bench said and advised the courts dealing with divorce
petitions to weigh the accusations among spouses on this scale.
However, it warned them not to a hyper-sensitive view of such matters as it would be counterproductive to the institution of marriage.