Wife’s Refusal To Have Physical Relation With Husband Amounts To Cruelty, Is Ground For Divorce: High Court

Bhopal: A wife’s refusal to consummate marriage or have physical relationship with her husband amounts to mental cruelty and is a valid ground for the husband to seek divorce, Madhya Pradesh High Court has ruled.

In an order passed last week, a two-member bench of the high court set aside a November 2014 family court order which had refused to grant divorce to a man who claimed his wife was subjecting him to mental cruelty by refusing to have sexual relations with him, reported The Indian Express.

“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,” said the division bench comprising of Justices Sheel Nagu and Vinay Saraf.

The wife denied consummation of marriage from wedding date on July 12, 2006, until the husband left India on July 28, 2006, the court noted.

“The appellant (husband) solemnised 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 read.

“There can never be any straightjacket formula or fixed parameters for determining mental cruelty in matrimonial matters and the appropriate way to adjudicate the case would be to evaluate it on its peculiar facts,” the court said.