Wife Making Unsubstantiated Allegations, Waging Legal War Against Husband And His Family Members Is Extreme Cruelty: Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court has said that the wife making serious and unsubstantiated allegations against the husband and waging a legal war against him by implicating him and his family members amounts to extreme cruelty towards spouse.

A division bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Justice Neena Bansal Krishna set aside a family court order and granted divorce to a husband on the ground of cruelty by the wife under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.

“Making of such serious and unsubstantiated allegations and waging a legal war against the husband by implicating him and his family members, clearly show the vindictive nature of the respondent and amounts to extreme cruelty towards the appellant/ husband,” the court said.

The parties got married in 1998 and two sons were born from the wedlock. They were living separately since 2006. The husband challenged the family court order which dismissed his divorce petition and refused to grant him divorce after observing that he failed to prove the acts of cruelty by the wife.

It was the husband’s case that the wife’s attitude was rude, insulting and derogatory towards his family members. He also contended that in 2006, the wife attempted to commit suicide by pouring kerosene only with an intent to implicate him and his family members.

Granting relief to the husband, the bench observed that the wife had made serious allegations that the husband was in an illicit relationship with a woman. However, the court said that she was not able to substantiate her allegations of illicit relationship by any evidence.

“However, as per the record, though serious allegations of her brother-in-law having illicit relationship with her have been levelled on several occasions, she has blatantly failed to prove any of her allegations,” the court said.

It added: “The aforementioned complaints and litigations clearly indicate that the respondent had made scandalous allegations of illicit involvement of the appellant with a third woman. She had also alleged her sexual exploitation by the brother of the appellant. Besides this she had also made allegations of dowry harassment. However, none of these allegations could be substantiated by her by any cogent evidence.”

Furthermore, the bench said that every aggrieved person has the absolute right to initiate appropriate legal action and has every right to approach the state machinery. However, it added that it was for the wife to establish that she was subjected to cruelty by placing forth cogent evidence in support of her allegations.

“Though filing of a criminal complaint per-se cannot amount to cruelty, however, such grave and indecent allegations of cruelty should be substantiated during the divorce proceedings and in the present case, the respondent has neither substantiated her allegations nor justified her conduct,” the court said.

It concluded that Family Court erred in ignoring the overwhelming evidence of false and defamatory accusations and multifarious litigations initiated by the wife against the husband as well as his family members which clearly established the acts cruelty by her.

“We hereby set aside the judgment dated 10.02.2020 and grant divorce on the ground of cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Act, 1955,” the court said.

Counsel for Appellant: Mr. Amit Chadha, Mr. Atin Chadha, Ms. Munisha Chadha, Ms. Swati Chawla, Ms. Smriti Shrivastava & Ms. Aeshana Singh, Advocates

Counsel for Respondent: Ms. Indu Kaul & Ms. Mehak Sharma, Advocates

Title: X v. Y

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Del) 1068

Click Here To Read Order