New Delhi: Hearing a divorce case of marriage lasted for mere 35 days, the Delhi Court ruled that denying sex to your spouse willfully counts as a cruelty. The court upheld the divorce and noted that the marriage was unsuccessful as it was not consummated.

A bench comprising of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait was hearing the arguments who rejected the wife’s appeal. The high court said, “marriage without sex is an anathema”while adding that “there is nothing (more) fatal to marriage than disappointment in sexual relationship”.

The court observed that the marriage was not consummated due to the resistance of the wife, who also filed a complaint against her husband accusing him of harrassment for dowry as “no cogent evidence” was available. This can also be called cruelty, said the court.

The court said: “In (a case), it (the high court has) .. observed that wilful denial of sexual relationship by a spouse amounts to cruelty, especially when the parties are newly married and this itself is a ground for grant of divorce.”

Mental Cruelty 

The court stressed that such deprivation over a period of more than 18 years in itself constitutes mental cruelty. As per a data from 2004, couples married following the Hindu customs. Later, their wives went to their maternal house and never returned.

Owing to which, the husbands then filed for divorce in family court on the grounds of cruelty and abandonment. In its order, the court said the family court had “rightly concluded” that although the reason for abandonment had not been proven, the wife’s behavior towards her husband had become cruel, forcing him to commit suicide. decided to divorce.

“Allegations of dowry harassment leading to registration of FIR and subsequent trial can only be termed as an act of cruelty when the appellant fails to prove even a single instance of demand dowry,” said the court.