CHENNAI: Overturning the order of a family court which refused to dissolve a marriage, the Madras High Court recently granted divorce to a hearing- and speech-impaired person after finding that he had suffered at his wife’s hands. She had gone to the extent of locking him up in the bathroom.
A division bench of justices M Dhandapani and A D Maria Clete passed the orders while allowing an appeal filed by the man, hailing from Karaikal in Puducherry, praying for setting aside the May 22, 2020, order of the family court in Karaikal, which dismissed his divorce petition.
The appellant’s marriage with the respondent, who is from Nagapattinam, was solemnised on September 8, 2013, as per Hindu rites and customs. The couple has a male child. In the meantime, a misunderstanding crept in and the respondent (wife) refused to live with him; since then, she had been staying with her parents.
According to the appellant’s counsel, he was even ready to desert his mother and a mentally ill sister, to continue the matrimonial life but his wife was not. Subsequently, he filed the divorce petition in 2017. The family court in Karaikal dismissed his divorce petition in May 2020, following which he appealed in the Madras High Court.
Stating that the appellant is a disabled person, the man’s counsel submitted that the wife subjected him to torture by locking him up in the bathroom. Further, he noted that she had categorically stated, during cross-examination in the family court, that she was not interested in continuing the matrimonial life.
The respondent’s counsel, however, contended that such a statement did not mean she was not having the intention to live with him and the statement could not be taken as a ground for dissolving the marriage.
Referring to the statement of the respondent during the cross-examination, the bench said such a statement itself makes it “very clear” that she is “not interested” in living with her husband.
Holding the family court’s order “perverse” and “liable to be set aside”, the bench ordered dissolution of the man’s marriage.