Shikhar Dhawan, India’s star cricketer, was granted divorce by a family court in Delhi on Wednesday. According to a Live Law report, the court granted divorce to Dhawan on the ground of ‘mental cruelty.’ Dhawan and his estranged wife Aesha Dhwana had not been living together since August 2020, the court noted while delivering the judgment. Family court judge Harish Kumar stated that the marriage of Dhawan and Aesha was ‘dead long ago.’ According to the report, the cricketer had claimed that Aesha had told him that she would be living with him here in India. But due to her ‘commitment’ to her ex-husband, Aesha decided to not move to India and live in Australia. Her two children from her first marriage and her son with Shikhar Dhawan were also staying with her in Australia.
In his verdict, Judge Kumar said that, “Respondent’s intentional decision to leave this matter uncontested also show her desire that court should pass decree of divorce even at the cost of holding her guilty of matrimonial offense as she knows that no harm could be caused to her even if she is held to have treated the petitioner cruelty because she has already obtained sufficient favourable orders from the Court in Australia.”
While delivering the verdict in the cricketer’s case, the family court in the Patiala House complex referred to the V. Bhagat v. D. Bhagat ruling by the Supreme Court. In the judgment, the top court had said that “Mental cruelty in Section 13(1)(i-a).can broadly be defined as that conduct which inflicts upon the other party such mental pain and suffering as would make it not possible for that party to live with the other. In other words, mental cruelty must be of such a nature that the parties cannot reasonably be expected to live together. The situation must be such that the wronged party cannot reasonably be asked to put up with such unintentional. If it is physical, it is a question of fact and degree. If it is mental, the enquiry must begin as to the nature of the cruel treatment and then as to the impact of such treatment on the mind of the spouse.”
Shikar Dhawan married Aesha Mukherjee back in 2012 October. During an interaction, he had said that he had failed to spot ‘red flags’ in his relationship.