Threatening to implicate spouse, in-laws in suicide attempt is cruelty: HC

MUMBAI: Threatening to send your spouse to jail by attempting to die by suicide amounts to cruelty and can be a ground to seek divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the Bombay high court recently held.

A single-judge bench of justice RM Joshi dismissed an appeal filed by a woman who had challenged a family court’s order granting divorce to her husband after finding that she had subjected him to cruelty.

The husband had approached a family court in 2017 for divorce after eight years of marriage. He claimed that his wife often threatened to die by suicide and blamed him and his aged parents for it. During one such incident, she even cut her veins, but the suicide attempt was unsuccessful. To avoid scrutiny, when she was called in the witness box, she hid the injury marks by applying mehendi on her hands, he added.

The man also claimed that his wife and her family would insult him whenever he visited their home, including when he and his family had gone to his in-laws’ home after his wife gave birth to their daughter in 2010.

“The husband has not only made the allegation that the wife used to threaten him and his family to send them to jail by committing suicide, but in fact, that attempt was made. Such an act on the part of the spouse would amount to such cruelty that it becomes a ground for decree of divorce,” said justice Joshi while dismissing the woman’s appeal.

The court also dismissed the woman’s claim that her father-in-law had outraged her modesty, was an alcoholic and would often abuse and beat her. “The wife was unable to give any explanation for making an allegation against the father of the husband without making any complaint to that effect to the police,” the court noted. It added that the petitioner had failed to prove her allegations against her husband or his father, and even failed to defend herself from the allegations made against her.