Deserting newborn can be ground for divorce, says Supreme Court

A woman deserting her newborn and husband for a long period causes cruelty to both and her conduct amounts to “irretrievable breakdown of marriage”, a condition for divorce, the Supreme Court (SC) has ruled.

Husband and wife deserting each other is not new, but a woman leaving her newborn makes for a unique case.

Bhavnaben left husband Harshad Zinabhai Desai for good in 1990, five weeks after their daughter was born and a year after their marriage at Dadra.

The girl is now 20 years old.

After the Silvasa district court rejected his plea for divorce on the ground of desertion in 1999, he moved the Bombay high court.

The high court ruled in his favour, maintaining that Bhavnaben had no justifiable reason to stay away from her husband and leave the child, who was one-month-old in 1990, uncared for.

Bhavnaben challenged the order in SC, which said on Thursday that she “unjustifiably threw the entire responsibility of bringing up the child on the husband”.

There were some bona fide offers made by Desai for reconciliation, but she adopted an “obstinate attitude” and rejected them, a bench of justices P Sathasivam and BS Chauhan observed while upholding the HC judgment.