The Madras High Court recently held that a wife arranging the marriage of her daughter without the knowledge of the husband amounts to marital cruelty justifying grant of divorce to the husband [G Sridhar v S Komala Kumari].
A Division Bench of Justices CV Karthikeyan and K Rajasekar passed the ruling in a case where the wife had secretly arranged the marriage of her 18-year-old daughter with her brother (the daughter's maternal uncle) who was a 32-year-old divorcee. The brother was previously married to the husband's niece but that marriage had broken down and even a police complaint had been filed by the niece against the brother.
The Court said that husband would have faced unimaginable mental agony in such circumstances.
"The pain of the appellant (husband) as a father could be visualised by us. He had never known that the respondent (wife) and daughter had gone away. Thereafter, after about a week, the respondent came back home and informed about the marriage. After the marriage is performed, the appellant can never take any step....At that particular point of time when the marriage of the daughter had occurred, as a parent he would have undergone extreme mental agony, pain and suffering which can never be compensated," the Court said.
The husband and wife in this case had been married since 1997 and had a daughter and son.
The husband moved a family court for divorce after the wife secretly arranged for their 18-year-old daughter to marry her own brother, the girl's maternal uncle. He alleged that the wife took the daughter to Bangalore for a week to conduct the marriage without informing either him or their son.
The wife did not dispute these facts but she claimed that she arranged the marriage in her daughter's interest as the daughter and her uncle had already entered into a relationship. She also alleged that she was was prevented from entering the matrimonial home after she returned from the daughter's wedding and that the husband had hidden her valuables and important documents. This prompted her to file a police complaint against the husband.
A family court dismissed the husband's petition for divorce and allowed an application filed by the wife for restitution of conjugal rights. This prompted the husband to move the High Court with the present petition.
The High Court opined that the trial court's approach of evaluating and weighing of acts of cruelty done by the wife was inadequate.
In this case, whether the marriage of the daughter would be beneficial to her was irrelevant.
"It is not an issue of whether the marriage was for the welfare of the daughter or not. This entire issue to be viewed purely from the eyes of the appellant herein and as a father, the agony he suffered that his daughter who has just completed 18 years was given in marriage to a person who was aged about 32 years, who was already divorced and against whom a police complaint was lodged by his former wife," the Court explained.
It found that the wife had committed continuous acts of cruelty against the husband in public and had even registered a complaint with the husband's superiors, making it difficult for the husband to continue in the marriage.
"We hold that the continuous acts causing mental cruelty including abuse of appellant, speaking disparagingly in public and lodging of complaint to the police and superior officers had definitely caused mental agony making it difficult to live with the respondent," the Court said.
The Court held that the acts individually as well as together had caused mental pain to the husband.
It, therefore, set aside the family court's order and granted divorce to the husband.
The husband was represented by advocate N Mariappan.
The wife was represented by advocate D Nellaiappan.
[Read Judgment]