GUWAHATI: The Madhya Pradesh High Court’s Indore Bench has ruled that compelling a wife to discontinue her studies or creating circumstances that prevent her from studying amounts to mental cruelty and constitutes a valid ground for divorce under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.
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According to a LiveLaw report published on Saturday, March 8, the court observed that the Family Court had overlooked the fact that the woman was not at fault but had sacrificed her dreams and career for marital obligations. Referring to the Supreme Court’s decision in Mohini Jain vs. State of Karnataka (1992), the court recognised education as an essential aspect of the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution.
The division bench of Justice Vivek Rusia and Justice Gajendra Singh stated that destroying a wife’s dreams early in marriage and forcing her to live with an uneducated and indifferent husband amounts to mental cruelty. The Family Court’s findings were set aside, and it was concluded that the wife had reasonable grounds to live separately.
The case pertained to a woman who had appealed against a Family Court judgment that had rejected her divorce plea and granted her husband’s petition for the restitution of conjugal rights. The couple married in 2015, and at the time, the wife had cleared her 12th standard examination. She was assured that she could continue her studies, but after marriage, she was informed by her in-laws that she could not pursue further education.
As a result, the woman alleged harassment for dowry and claimed she was subjected to unnatural sexual intercourse and threats from her husband. A case was filed under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, along with a divorce petition. The husband, however, argued that he had no objection to her education and had even paid for her B.Sc. course.
The High Court, however, found that the husband was uneducated and had not borne the expenses of her studies. It noted that the couple had lived together only for three days in July 2016, and their marriage had irretrievably broken down. Therefore, the court ruled in favour of the wife, dissolving the marriage on the grounds of mental cruelty.