Forcing husband to live in separate room is cruelty, says Allahabad High Court granting divorce

Lucknow: The Allahabad High Court in a family matter has said that forcing the husband to live in a separate room and refusing to cohabit with him amounts to physical and mental cruelty and was sufficient ground for divorce.

A division bench comprising Justice Rajan Roy and Justice Subhash Vidyarthi said this while allowing an appeal by the husband against the order of the family court rejecting his application for divorce.

‘’Cruelty is to be taken as a behaviour by one spouse towards the other, which causes reasonable apprehension in the mind of the latter that it is not safe for him or her to continue the matrimonial relationship with the other… mental cruelty is a state of mind and feeling with one of the spouses due to the behaviour or behavioural pattern by the other,’’ the court said in a recent judgement.

‘’Unlike the case of physical cruelty, mental cruelty is difficult to establish by direct evidence. It is necessarily a matter of inference to be drawn from the facts and circumstances of the case. A feeling of anguish, disappointment and frustration in one spouse caused by the conduct of the other can only be appreciated by assessing the attending facts and circumstances in which the two partners of matrimonial life have been living,’’ it added.

The court said that cohabitation was an essential part of a matrimonial relationship and if the wife declines to cohabit with the husband by forcing him to live in a separate room, she deprives him of his conjugal rights, which will have an adverse impact on his mental and physical well being and will amount to both physical and mental cruelty.

‘’The plaintiff has categorically stated that the defendant did not allow him to enter her room and she declined cohabitation with the plaintiff and did not perform her matrimonial obligations, it was apparent that the defendant had abandoned the matrimonial relationship between herself and the plaintiff and the fact of the defendant residing in the plaintiff’s house or away from it is not of any significance,’’ the court added.

The court said that the defendant (wife) did not file a written statement to contradict these pleadings and, therefore, she impliedly admitted the plaintiff’s pleadings. ‘’It is a well established principle of law that admission is the best evidence and the admitted facts need no proof,’’ it added.

‘’ In view of the aforesaid facts, we are of the considered view that there was sufficient evidence to prove the grounds of cruelty pleaded by the plaintiff-appellant for grant of a decree of divorce the plaintiff has successfully proved by his ex-parte evidence that the defendant was treating him with cruelty,’’ the court said while allowing the appeal.