Calcutta man granted divorce for ‘imposition’ of wife’s friend and family

Calcutta High Court grants divorce decree in favor of husband for cruelty, which includes ‘forcing’ wife’s friend and family on him and filing false complaint of cruelty matrimonial on his part.

The division bench headed by Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya set aside the judgment of the trial court which had denied a decree of divorce in favor of the husband, terming it perverse and wrong.

He said in his judgment delivered on December 19 that the appellant (husband) against the respondent (wife) had sufficient evidence of mental cruelty to justify granting divorce on such grounds.

The bench, also comprising Justice Uday Kumar, granted the divorce decree to the husband on the grounds of cruelty, thereby breaking up the marriage between the two.

It noted that the continued presence of the wife’s friend and other family members at the husband’s official residential quarters at Kolaghat in East Midnapore district, despite his objections and discomfort over the same , is confirmed by the records.

“Such imposition of friends and family members of the respondent on the husband in his neighborhood against his will, sometimes even when the wife of the respondent herself was not there, for a period of time continued, can certainly be considered as cruelty, as it may well have made life impossible for the appellant, which would fall within the wider scope of cruelty,” the bench observed.

It is said that the wife, in the present case, has unilaterally taken the decision to refuse to have a married life with her husband for a considerable period, and that there is certainly a long period of continuous separation, indicating without error that the matrimonial bond is irreparable.

The husband’s lawyer argued that the wife used to spend most of her family time with her friend, saying that this in itself constituted an act of cruelty.

The couple married on December 15, 2005.

The husband had filed a divorce suit on September 25, 2008 and on October 27 of the same year, the wife had filed a complaint against the husband and his family by registered mail at the Nabadwip police station, in whose jurisdiction the the husband’s paternal residence. located.

Criminal proceedings were therefore initiated under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) based on the complaint.

His lawyer produced before the court the judgment of the criminal court by which the husband and his family members had been acquitted of the charges brought against them by the wife, asserting that this acquittal and the timing of the filing of the complaint demonstrated that it was entirely false.

It has been argued that such baseless harassment also constitutes cruelty.

The wife’s lawyer argued that the husband had failed to prove his cruelty and, therefore, the divorce petition was rightly dismissed by the trial court judge.

Noting that the wife was residing at her official quarters at Narkeldanga in Kolkata from May 2008, while the husband was residing at Kolaghat in East Midnapore district, the court said that the wife’s deliberate intention not to not returning to married life constitutes cruelty in itself.

The division bench said that since there had been no contemporaneous complaints from the wife throughout the marriage and instead she had lived with her husband for three years from 2005 to 2008, without any grievance being raised, added to the fact that the wife’s mother and her friend lived in the Kolaghat neighborhoods, even when the wife was not there, indicate that the allegations subsequently made against the husband were not only afterwards.

“It is quite evident that the mere allegations made in the wife’s complaint under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, without any details or even mention of the specific acts or dates of cruelty, were totally baseless and without merit,” the court said. said the bench.

“Such crude and false allegations constitute cruelty sufficient to give rise to the presumption that the husband found it impossible to continue living with his wife, thus falling within the scope of cruelty as envisaged in matrimonial cases,” he said. he observed.