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Wife’s Repeated Absence From Matrimonial Home, Subsequent Institution Of Multiple Complaints Amounts To Cruelty: Delhi High Court

 

Wife’s Repeated Absence From Matrimonial Home, Subsequent Institution Of Multiple Complaints Amounts To Cruelty: Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court held that a wife’s repeated absence from the matrimonial home, coupled with her filing of multiple complaints against her husband and his family, amounts to cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act. The decision was given by a Division Bench comprising Justices Anil K. Khetrapal and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar.

In the case before the Court, the husband had filed for divorce on the ground of cruelty, alleging that his wife had persistently neglected her marital duties. Among the specific allegations were that she repeatedly left the matrimonial home without the husband’s consent, denied him conjugal relations, and had prevented him from seeing their child. The husband also claimed that just after he filed his divorce petition, the wife lodged three FIRs against him and his family members.

The Family Court had granted a decree of divorce to the husband under Section 13(1)(ia), finding that the wife’s conduct amounted to cruelty. The wife then appealed this decision, but the Delhi High Court dismissed her appeal.

In its reasoning, the Court emphasized that co-habitation and performance of matrimonial obligations are essential foundations of marriage, and that when one spouse persistently refuses those duties, it causes mental suffering to the other. The Court found that the wife’s conduct—her prolonged refusal to live at the matrimonial home, denial of intimacy, absence from domestic obligations, and instituting complaints only after the divorce petition—together formed a pattern of behavior that was continuous, deliberate, and sufficiently severe to amount to cruelty.

The Court also underscored the importance of timing in assessing such complaints: the fact that the FIRs were filed only after the divorce petition was instituted was relevant to evaluating their credibility and context. Additionally, the Court noted that the husband’s efforts to access his child were systematically frustrated by the wife, and held that using a child as a tool in matrimonial conflict can itself be a form of psychological cruelty—one that harms the parent being alienated and also affects the child.

Thus, combining all these factors, the Court concluded that the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage was first evidenced by the wife’s conduct, making the husband’s claim for divorce on grounds of cruelty sustainable. The appeal was dismissed, and the judgment of the Family Court upheld.

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