The Delhi High Court has noted that a wife’s attempt at suicide and her subsequent attempt to place the blame on her husband and in-laws constitute an act of extreme cruelty and grounds for divorce. Judges Suresh Kumar Kait and Neena Bansal Krishna, sitting on the Division Bench, stated that the husband and his family would always be in danger of being connected to fraudulent cases as a result of their actions.
The Court noted that the appellant’s attempt at suicide and subsequent attempt to place the blame on the husband and his family members constituted an act of extraordinary cruelty since the family was detained under the fear of being linked to false cases. As a result, the bench dismissed an appeal that a lady had brought to overturn the family court’s decision to divorce her spouse due to cruelty.
In this instance, the couple was married in 2007 and had a child born into their union. But according to the husband, the wife only stayed in the marital residence for four months before leaving. It was reported that she had filed a police complaint, claiming that the husband’s parents had made outrageous demands and had offered an enormous sum of dowry.
It was reported to the court that the wife attempted suicide once more in December 2009 by ingesting liquid mosquito repellant. After weighing the accusations, the bench observed that although the wife had maintained during her cross-examination that she was not even at home when she made her suicide attempt, she had stated that she was coerced into writing the suicide note.
The Bench further observed that despite the fact that the wife had filed multiple complaints and that many of these instances had resulted in an acquittal, she continued to submit appeals in an effort to guarantee that he and his family members were imprisoned.
“The appellant, without a doubt, has a legal right to seek redress for any wrongs that may have been done, but launching criminal proceedings against the respondent and making baseless claims that you were the victim of dowry demands or other cruel acts by the respondent or his family members are obviously cruel acts,” the court noted.
In the end, the court found that the parties in this case barely lived together for ten months out of their two years of marriage, and even then, the wife had committed numerous cruel acts against her husband, including filing false complaints and engaging in civil and criminal litigation. The Hindu Marriage Act’s Section 13(1)(ia) permits divorce for respondents who have been exposed to cruelty by the appellant. Based on this, the High Court concluded that the learned Addl. Principal Judge, Family Court, made the correct decision in this regard.
