Guwahati high court dismisses the review petition of a divorce decree after it found that the marriage was ‘irretrievably broken’ and the wife refused to wear sindoor and stopped considering the respondent her husband.
The review petition was sought by the wife on the grounds that not wearing sindoor cannot amount to cruelty and divorce couldn’t be granted for the same while contending that other grounds such as stopping the husband from discharging his duties to his parents were erroneous.
The court referred to the wife’s statement under oath where she stated that she was not wearing sindoor because she did not consider Bhaskar das(divorced spouse) her husband. The court remarked “in the given circumstance when the wife states that she is not wearing ‘sindoor’ because she does not consider Bhaskar Das as her husband, the marriage was irrevocably broken. Surely, if the wife takes a plea on oath that she is not wearing ‘sindoor’ because she does not consider the husband as her husband, it does not indicate a surviving and happy marriage.” The court further considered such actions hurtful towards the husband and stated that it could not compel the husband to live with such wife. The court further justified its stand considering circumstances where the wife never wore sindoor, but in the current case, it appeared that wife used to wear sindoor in the past and stopped wearing when she stopped considering the marriage valid, and after considering both facts and statements the court considered it as cruelty.
The court further clarified that cruelty on the basis of not wearing sindoor alone wasn’t the ground for the divorce, the court relied on other grounds such as cruelty on the basis of false criminal proceedings by the wife and other facts and circumstances of the case which shows that marriage was irrevocably broken with no harmony left between the husband and wife. The court held that cruelty with the husband justifies the divorce and dismissed the review petition.
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Picture Source : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Tying_the_knot_for_7_lives_of_togetherness.jpg
