SC lays down broad guidelines for determining cruelty

New Delhi, Mar 28 (UNI) The Supreme Court has enumerated main factors which must be taken into consideration by the courts while deciding petitions seeking divorce on the grounds of cruelty.

A bench comprising Justices B N Agrawal, P P Naolekar and Dalveer Bhandari in judgment dated March 26 while setting aside the impugned Calcutta High Court judgment reversing the decree of divorce passed by the trial court in December 1996 described matrimonial dispute between the two IAS officers namely petitioner Samar Ghosh and respondent wife Jaya Ghosh as "unfortunate." The court has held that broadly speaking 14 factors such as long separation, total lack of emotions for each other, constant humiliation, use of abusive language by one spouse against the other, man getting himself sterilised without knowledge and consent of his wife and wife getting aborted without knowledge and consent of her husband, unilateral decision not to have children, refusal by either spouse to have sexual intercourse for a considerable period of time and sustained unjustifiable conduct of either spouse are some of the relevant factors for deciding the issue of mental cruelty.

In the present case Jaya had divorced her first husband Debashish Gupta, also an IAS officer and got married to the petitioner on December 23,1984 to defeat the appeal filed by her first husband against the divorce. She also had girl child from her first husband.

Immediately after marriage, Jaya told her second husband Samir Ghosh not to interfere in her personal life and career and also told him not to love her daughter as he was not her father. The two got separated on August 27,1990 and have been living separately since than and the apex court considered the long separation of over 16 long years coupled with the total lack of feelings for one another as wife or any of her family members did not bother to inquire about his condition when the petitioner underwent bypass surgery as the main ground for holding," This is a clear case of irretrievable breakdown of marriage. In our considered view it is impossible to preserve or save the marriage, any further effort to keep it alive would prove to be totally counter productive." Justice Bhandari writing 73-page judgment for the bench restored the well considered judgment of the trial court granting decree of divorce.

The court while holding that uniform standard can not be laid down for guidance , yet some instances of human behaviour can be enumerated which are relevant for dealing with the cases of mental cruelty, also ruled that the married life should be reviewed as a whole and a few isolated instances over a period of years will not amount to cruelty.

The trial court had granted divorce on December 19,1996 while the high court reversed the verdict of the trial court on May 20,2003.

The appellant husband was turned out from the government flat allotted to the wife in preplanned manner and young child was reportedly tutored that the petitioner was not her real father.

UNI