Court grants divorce to BMC official who accused wife of mental cruelty

Moreover, apart from “blowing trivial matters out of proportion and causing major fights” he claimed that, “She was not wearing a bindi, an auspicious symbol of a married woman.” After his father’s death, his mother lived alone as the wife did not want her mother-in-law staying with them, the BMC employee further alleged.

The respondent wife, through her lawyer, has argued that there was only a difference of three years in her age and her husband’s, and not five years as claimed by the petitioner. It is her case that the petitioner did not treat her very well and also abused her dead parents.

“The respondent submits that when she started working as a teacher, the petitioner would say that all working ladies are used for sex in the organization and hence he did not want her to take up a job,” principal judge Laxmi Rao observed in her order, while granting divorce to the couple.

She also claimed, he had an affair with his colleague who resided in the same building as the couple did.

However, the allegation was proved wrong in the court, after the husband of the employee testified that no such affair had been going on. While the wife had claimed that her husband and his colleague had gone to Japan to be with each other, the colleague’s husband stated in court that he himself was also present during the trip and that they had gone there to attend a Disaster Management conference. The colleague’s husband further claimed that this was an attempt to defame his wife on part of the respondent.

The court, however, observed that the wife has portrayed behaviour amounting to anguish and pain to the husband by constantly quarrelling with him in a loud voice in the building and on the streets, and even going to his office and humiliating him, to the extent of even meeting the municipal commissioner on one occasion and talking about her husband’s supposed affair with his colleague.

Since the wife did not want a divorce, there was  no demand for maintenance or alimony  and hence the same was not granted by the court.
meghna.yelluru@expressindia.com