Even one false complaint is matrimonial cruelty: HC

Even one false complaint is matrimonial cruelty: HC

Rules That Man Is Entitled To Divorce In Such Cirumstances

Ajay.Sura@timesgroup.com

Chandigarh:25.09.2021

The Punjab and Haryana high court has held that even one defamatory complaint filed by a wife in an agitated mood to falsely implicate her husband and his family amounts to cruelty and the man in the case is entitled to divorce on this ground.

“Filing of the complaints for the initiation of criminal proceedings, which were found to be baseless and false, causes harassment and torture to the husband and his family. One such complaint is sufficient to constitute matrimonial cruelty,” observed a division bench comprising Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Archana Puri.

They passed these orders while upholding the decision of a family court in Rohtak and dismissed the woman’s appeal against the dissolution of her marriage.

“It stands established as detailed aforesaid that the appellant-wife, after leaving the matrimonial home in less than three months of the marriage, indulged in the filing of the applications/complaints against her husband and his family members, while being in an agitated mood, she had made defamatory complaints against her husband and his family members and the same were found to be false and the police did not find it fit case to be tried. Considering the same in totality, the act and conduct of the appellantwife definitely caused mental cruelty to the husband,” the bench held.

In this case, the marriage of the couple was solemnized in February 2012 in the Rohtak district of Haryana and they had a son together.

According to the husband, the woman was of quarrelsome nature and her family members started interfering in their matrimonial life after their marriage. She was not happy to live in her husband’s joint family of husband in the village and started pressuring him to arrange separate accommodation in Rohtak town, far away from his parents.

When he was unable to arrange separate accommodation, his wife became annoyed and started extending threats to implicate him and his family members in a false dowry case. In order to pacify the matter, the man’s parents arranged a rental accommodation in Rohtak, so that the couple may live peacefully. However, the wife’s family members started frequently visiting the house and when he objected to the same, she became more arrogant and started causing cruelty, harassment, and torture to him and his family members, on one pretext or the other. She had not given any breathing time to her husband and his family members, to try to rehabilitate her. Rather, she had filed complaints, one after the other, and the same were found to be false and baseless and the police never thought it appropriate to initiate an investigation on the basis thereof. Some complaints were also filed thereby trying to implicate menfolk of her in-laws’ family in sexual harassment cases but in the same also, her version was disbelieved.