The Court, therefore, dismissed the appeal filed by a husband challenging the June 28, 2019 order of a Family Court in Janjgir which had denied decree of divorce to him on grounds of cruelty.
The Chhattisgarh High Court, in a recent judicial pronouncement concerning the case of Ravishankar Shrivas vs Sarita Sen, has elucidated that a wife’s insistence on residing with her husband at his place of employment does not constitute cruelty under the purview of the Hindu Marriage Act.
The division bench, presided over by Justices Goutam Bhaduri and Deepak Kumar Tiwari, underscored the imperative nature of reciprocal respect, consideration, and conjugal cohabitation within the framework of matrimonial relationships.
“It is obvious that if the wife insists to stay with the husband and without any extraneous reason or official cause, if husband refuses to keep her at the posting place, it cannot be said to be a cruelty by the wife towards the husband for such insistence,” the bench held.
Consequently, the Court, in a judicial capacity, declined the husband’s appeal seeking to contest the judgment of the Family Court in Janjgir, rendered on June 28, 2019, wherein the Family Court had denied the husband’s plea for divorce on grounds of alleged cruelty.
The couple had entered into matrimonial union on May 19, 2005, initially experiencing a period of connubial felicity. Nonetheless, their marital relationship progressively deteriorated. The husband contended that his wife insisted on establishing a separate residence, detached from his parental abode. Upon his refusal to accede to her request, frequent discord arose.
Furthermore, the husband asserted that in June 2009, his wife willfully vacated their conjugal domicile, returning only in December 2009. Subsequently, she again left the marital home without apparent justification.
He contended that following the demise of his mother in 2012 and his father in 2015, he beseeched his wife to return to their matrimonial abode, but she steadfastly declined.
Conversely, the wife asserted that their marital harmony endured solely for the initial five years subsequent to their nuptials. She alleged that her husband withheld consent for her to accompany him to his professional station and cohabit with him therein, commencing in 2010. She claimed that he began displaying neglectful behavior towards her, prompting her departure.
Upon meticulous scrutiny of the contentions proffered by both parties, the Court took cognizance of the fact that the husband himself had declined to accommodate his wife at his workplace and had not provided substantiated rationale for such refusal in either his petition or testimony.
“When the conduct of the husband was at fault in not allowing his wife to reside with him and in such compelling circumstances, if the wife is living separately at her parental house and the husband has also not made any effort or called any social meeting and not taken any steps for filing any application for restitution of conjugal rights, mere assertion in the plaint that the wife is residing separately since December 2009 for any sufficient cause, is not found to be proved,” the bench said in the order passed on September 25.
The bench, therefore, dismissed the appeal and also directed the husband to pay interim maintenance of ₹15,000 to the wife.
