The High Court criticised a family court’s decision to dissolve a Hindu marriage by adopting an oversimplistic approach.
The Allahabad High Court recently observed that a Hindu marriage cannot be dissolved or terminated like a contract. Justices Saumitra Dayal Singh and Donadi Ramesh made this remark while granting an appeal by a woman who challenged a family court’s decision to dissolve her marriage based on her husband’s petition. The High Court overturned the family court’s ruling, stressing that a Hindu marriage, being sacramental, can only be dissolved under specific circumstances and after the presentation of adequate evidence.
It requires no elaboration that a Hindu marriage is not to be dissolved or terminated as a contract. The sacrament based Hindu marriage may be dissolved (in law), in limited circumstances. In the first place, a Hindu marriage may be declared void on an allegation of impotency suffered by either spouse only on the strength of evidence led,” the Court said in its September 6 ruling.
The case involved a couple who married in 2006. The husband, an Indian Army employee, accused his wife of deserting him in 2007 and filed for divorce in 2008, also alleging that she was infertile.
Initially, in her 2008 written statement, the wife consented to the divorce. However, in 2010, she contested the divorce by filing a second written statement. In this second statement, she disproved the infertility claim by presenting documents showing that she had given birth to two children—one in 2008, shortly after the divorce petition was filed, and another in 2010.
The husband objected to the submission of the second statement. In March 2011, the family court upheld his objection and decided not to consider the wife’s 2010 statement. On the same day, the court proceeded to hear the case on its merits and granted the husband’s divorce petition.
The wife appealed this decision to the High Court. The High Court overturned the family court’s ruling, observing that the case had not been reviewed comprehensively. The Court noted that while there are restrictions on submitting a second written statement, the lower court was not barred from requesting additional statements to address the changed circumstances in this case.
The divorce suit having been instituted in the year 2008 and it having remained pending for three years, an over simplistic approach has been adopted-in relying only on the bald (first) Written Statement filed by the appellant (wife), and the consent dated 28.04.2008 … while ignoring subsequent developments,” the High Court observed.
The High Court found that there was no “mutual” consent for divorce when the family court granted the petition. Although the wife had initially consented to the divorce in 2008, she later withdrew her consent, as shown in her oral testimony in 2011. The High Court stressed that the trial court should have evaluated whether the wife had changed her position.
“The learned Court below has erred in blindly acting on the consent recorded on 28.4.2008 … Once the appellant claimed to have withdrawn her consent and that fact was on the record, it never became open to the learned court below to act on that (withdrawn) consent, belatedly,” the High Court held.
The Bench expressed a willingness to assist the estranged spouses in resolving their differences, but was unable to proceed as the husband was not present in court.
The High Court granted the wife’s appeal, overturning the divorce decree, and instructed the trial court to review the case again in accordance with the law.
“If no mediation may arise or be successful, necessarily the appellant (wife) may be allowed to rely on the second Written Statement … with corresponding right to the respondent (husband) to file Replication Statement,” the Court added.
