The Madhya Pradesh High Court recently ruled that a wife’s refusal to consummate the marriage or engage in physical relations with her husband constitutes mental cruelty and is a legitimate ground for divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act.
A division bench, comprising Justices Sheel Nagu and Vinay Saraf, overturned a Bhopal family court order from November 2014 that had denied divorce to a man, who argued that his wife was inflicting mental cruelty on him by declining to engage in sexual relations.
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According to The Indian Express, the High Court in its order dated January 3 rejected the trial court’s findings regarding the absence of consummation or physical intimacy, stating, “We are unable to accept the findings of the trial court on the issue of absence of consummation of marriage or physical intimacy. The trial court has wrongly held that failure on the part of the wife to consummate the marriage cannot be a ground for divorce.”
In this specific case, the High Court noted that the wife had consistently refused to consummate the marriage from the wedding date on July 12, 2006, until the husband’s departure on July 28, 2006.
“The appellant (husband) solemnized the marriage…was hopeful to consummate the marriage, but the same was denied by the respondent (wife), and certainly, the said act of the respondent amounts to mental cruelty,” the order stated.
Additionally, the court underscored that determining mental cruelty in matrimonial matters does not have a one-size-fits-all approach.
The court observed that there can never be any straight jacket formula or fixed parameters for determining mental cruelty in matrimonial matters and recommended evaluating each case based on its unique circumstances.