The court said on Friday that there must be instances making out a case beyond the “reasonable doubt” that a couple can’t share the roof.
Seeking divorce citing irretrievable break down of marriage will not be an easy affair now as a latest ruling by the Allahabad high court says couples have to demonstrate that there had been extraordinary instances of cruelty to make a case.
The court said on Friday that there must be instances making out a case beyond the “reasonable doubt” that a couple can’t share the roof.
The ruling has come in an appeal filed by one Dr Ajai Lavania seeking divorce from his wife, Dr Shobhna Dubey. They have accused each other of cruelty and adultery.
“Continuing of minor incidents or quarrel during matrimonial life in today’s atmosphere when everyone is facing complex problem in day to day life from office to house or in the street shall not constitute cruelty for statutory divorce,” the court said in a first ever ruling regarding the scope of the irretrievable breakdown clause that has found a place in the Hindu Marriage Act.
“Only a violence which is deliberate, planned and intentional to harm the other side for some extraneous reasons or may be because of some illicit relationship may constitute cruelty and warrant divorce,” the court said on Friday while refusing to prescribe divorce for the couple.
There may be a case where both partners accuse each other of “easy virtue”. Or they are “flirts” or have been “indulging in unethical practice”. Should they be separated by the court’s hammer?
The bench of Justice SC Chaurasia and Justice Devi Prasad Singh said that in such a situation, it is for the court to decide the issue in a “just and proper manner to secure the interest of both sides”.
The court also expressed regret that the higher judiciary, in the absence of any yardstick to measure the injury caused by the western way of life, approved to some extent the matrimonial life professed by the West without thinking the consequences which the nation may suffer in future.
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