A Gandhinagar court ordered a woman to join her husband and fulfil her matrimonial duties after she couldn’t furnish evidence that her husband suffers from mental illness.
The woman, a junior clerk in the secretariat, deserted her husband three years ago claiming that he was suffering from schizophrenia and his erratic behaviour caused her mental pressure. She also filed for divorce on the grounds of his mental illness besides citing cruelty by him and her in-laws.
The woman is from Giyod village and her husband lives at Dashela village near Gandhinagar. They married in 2014. She got a job in a Vadodara court in 2015. A year later she got another job at the Sachivalaya and shifted to her matrimonial home.
She left her husband and in-laws and went to live at her maternal home in Giyod in 2017. She filed for divorce in March 2019, and her divorce application is pending in a Gandhinagar court.
Two months after the wife filed for divorce, the husband approached the court and demanded restitution of conjugal rights under Section 9 of the Hindu Marriage Act. The deserter has to establish justifiable ground for desertion.
The husband claimed that since he was a farmer, his wife looked on his profession as below her dignity. He refuted his wife’s claim that he was suffering from schizophrenia and asserted that she had deserted him only because she does not like this marriage.
In reply, the wife claimed that she came to know about her husband mental condition immediately after marriage. During a schizophrenic stroke, he got violent and would continuously laugh without any reason. As soon as she came to know about his illness, she got a government job for security.
The wife, however, told the court that during their interactions for two years before their marriage, she did not find any symptoms of schizophrenia in her husband.
The court, while ordering her on Monday to go and live with her husband to fulfil her matrimonial obligations, said that she could not furnish any evidence to establish husband’s mental illness. Without this evidence, there was no justifiable reason for desertion.
Source link
Picture Source :
