The Punjab and Hrayana High Court upheld the decision of a Hisar Family Court granting divorce to a physically challenged man with 50 per cent hearing loss & using a hearing aid, who had alleged that his weight had dropped from 74kg to 53kg due to mental cruelty by his wife. Dismissing the plea filed by the man’s wife against the family court order, the High Court mainly relied on the fact that all criminal complaints and cases filed by the woman against her husband, his family were found false, which amounts to mental cruelty. The division bench, comprising Justice Ritu Bahri, Justice Archana Puri, passed the orders while dismissing the petition filed by a woman from Hisar, seeking quashing of the order dated Aug 27, 2019, through which the Family Court had allowed her estranged husband’s plea & granted divorce. The couple had got married in April 2012 and have a daughter. The man works in a bank & the woman is a teacher in a private school in Hisar. Their daughter lives with her father.
The wife alleged harassment at hands of her in laws. The man’s case was that his wife was hot-tempered and spendthrift who never tried to adjust herself in his family. According to him, she used to pick up fights over small matters due to which he felt humiliated in front of his parents and relatives, but kept silent, believing that good sense would prevail upon her in the near future, but her behaviour never changed. Accusing his wife of cruelty, the man alleged before the Court that he weighed 74 kg till the time of marriage, but his weight had fallen to 53 kg after that. Denying the allegations, the woman contended that she always performed her marital obligations with love and respect.
She also alleged that after 6 months of marriage, her husband and his family members started harassing and humiliating her for dowry. During the hearing of the case, the HC found that the woman had left her husband in 2016 & had also left her daughter in the matrimonial house and never tried to meet her. It also came to the fore that the husband’s family had never demanded any dowry & had even paid for the woman’s higher studies after the marriage. The HC also found that false complaints were also filed by the woman against her husband and his family members. “Keeping in view that the appellant was an educated woman, she was aware of the effects of criminal complaints, which she had made against her husband and his family members in 2013 and 2019. Moreover, he was looking after his three-year-old daughter alone after his wife had left the matrimonial home in the year 2016. All this amounted to mental cruelty,” observed the High Court while dismissing the woman’s petition against divorce.