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Case: Joydeep Majumdar Vs Bharti Jaiswal Majumdar [CA NOS. 3786-3787 OF 2020]
The Supreme Court on February 26 ruled that a wife reporting allegations that may affect the husband's career and reputation amounts to mental cruelty against him for the purpose of getting a divorce.
The three-judge bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Justice Hrishikesh Roy stated that the court has to keep in mind the status, the level of education, and the background that the parties belong to in order to determine whether the ground of mental cruelty is enough to dissolve a marriage and grant a divorce at the instance of the suffering party. They also mentioned that the degree of tolerance may vary from couple to couple.
The bench remarked that in order to grant a divorce to a couple on the instance of a spouse on grounds of mental cruelty, the result of the said cruelty must be such that it is not possible to continue the marital relationship any further. The party that was subjected to such a degree of mental cruelty cannot be expected to condone the actions of the spouse and stay in a matrimonial relationship. In this case, the allegations were made by a highly educated spouse and the actions of the wife did have the potential to negatively impact the husband's career and reputation.
Background
The husband, an army officer who was the petitioner in this case alleged his wife of subjecting him to mental cruelty various times. He alleged that his wife had filed numerous fabricated complaints against him which caused irreparable damage to his career, reputation, and mental peace. She, according to the petitioner, had made multiple complaints against him before his superiors in the armed force, including the Chief of Army Staff. Although he was granted a divorce by a Family Court, the High Court had reversed it, which resulted in him approaching the Supreme Court.
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