New Delhi: Can alcoholism be treated as a valid ground for divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955? Yes, says the Chhattisgarh High Court.
In a ruling on 26 July, a division bench of justices Goutam Bhaduri and Sanjay K. Agrawal held that a man’s excessive drinking could amount to cruelty and be held as a ground for divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act.
The court was hearing the wife’s appeal against a family court’s refusal to grant her divorce against her husband, whom she accused of being ‘abusive and neglectful’. According to her, the neglect ranged from assault and selling household items to support his alcohol habit, to refusing to pay his children’s school fees.
On his part, the husband denied the allegations his wife had levelled and opposed the divorce on the ground that he had tried to make the marriage work.
The high court, however, rejected the arguments, holding that the husband’s alcoholism had affected the family and could “naturally lead to mental cruelty”.
“…we are of the view that the judgment and decree passed by the learned Family Court cannot be allowed to sustain,” the court said in its order. “Accordingly, in view of the law laid down by the Supreme Court, we hold that the wife was able to prove the mental cruelty by the husband, as such is entitled for a decree of divorce.”
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‘Husband’s drinking lead to cruelty’
Under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, in order to prove “cruelty” as a ground for divorce, a petitioner must show that the spouse has “persistently or repeatedly treated the petitioner with such cruelty as to cause a reasonable apprehension in the mind of the petitioner that it will be harmful or injurious for the petitioner to live with the other party”.
In Maya Devi v. Jagdish Prasad in 2007, the Supreme Court held that this cruelty need not always be physical. That case pertained to a divorce petition by a man who had accused his wife of cruelty.
“Cruelty, which is a ground for dissolution of marriage, may be defined as willful and unjustifiable conduct of such character as to cause danger to life, limb or health, bodily or mental, or as to give rise to a reasonable apprehension of such a danger,” the court had held then.
The question of mental cruelty has to be considered in the light of “the norms of marital ties of the particular society, to which the parties belong, their social values, status, environment in which they live”, the court had said.
In the current case, the appellant wife had claimed that the husband was unemployed and had refused to work to support his family. She added that when she would ask him to stop drinking and take up employment, he would assault her.
In response to the wife’s allegations, the husband told the court that since it was he who faced physical abuse, his wife could not claim divorce on the ground of cruelty.
The family court had rejected the husband’s contentions, but also refused to grant the divorce. The court, however, did issue a warning to the husband.
The high court disagreed with the lower court’s ruling. In the order, the court said that the appellant had filed for divorce previously too, but withdrew the petition when the husband promised to “leave the drinking habit and (said that he) would mend his behaviour and will not torture the appellant/wife”.
The court held that it was natural that the wife, who had no source of income of her own, would depend upon the husband to support the family.
“If the husband, instead of discharging his obligation, indulges himself in excessive drinking habits, which deteriorates the family condition, it would naturally lead to a mental cruelty to the wife and the entire family, including children,” the court held, ordering the husband to pay Rs 15,000 a month as alimony to the wife.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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