A local family court has allowed a lawyer to serve a notice by email to a girl in Australia on a divorce petition filed by her husband.
Setting an ideal precedent for use of information technology (IT) as an effective tool in judicial proceedings, a local family court has allowed a lawyer to serve a notice by email to a girl in Australia on a divorce petition filed by her husband. The idea was to see that the notice reached the respondent fast and on time.
The petitioner, Mitesh Patel, wanted to send divorce notice to his estranged wife Puja by email as he knew that she had changed her residential address. He also apprehended that she might refuse to accept the court summons if sent by regular post. After the summons were sent by email, Puja gave a reply by email, saying that she had got copies of the notice and the divorce petition. The court accepted Puja’s reply as record. Now, Mitesh can proceed further on the petition.
“We decided to send copies of the notice and the petition by e-mail on the basis of Information Technology Act, 2002. According to the Act, one can use email to serve notices and summons of the court and the court can also recognise it once the other party endorses it by giving reply,” said Dilip Ahuja, lawyer of Mitesh. “This tool can be used effectively when parties are abroad,” he added.
Mitesh has claimed in the petition that Puja used him as a tool to go to Australia and earn money. “Even she also refused to cohabit, thereby not consummating the marriage, and went to her sister’s house in Melbourne to stay there,” he cited in the petition.
As the case goes, Mitesh, a citizen of Australia and working in a government department in Brisbane, had come to Ahmedabad to look for a bride. Mitesh met Puja, a resident of Satellite area, and they got married by registering the marriage in December 2007.
In April 2008, Puja reached Brisbane on ‘spouse migration visa’. However, Puja’s behavior changed thereafter and she went to her sister’s house in Melbourne. According to Mitesh, he tried his best to restore the marriage but in vain. Then he filed a petition of divorce in a family court in Ahmedabad through his father. (Names have been changed)
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