Jaipur family court grants man divorce, holds wife’s false dowry case, desertion since 2015 amounted to cruelty

Jaipur: A family court here has dissolved the marriage of a Jaipur man on the grounds of cruelty and desertion, holding that his wife had implicated him and his family in a false dowry harassment case and had been living away from him without any reasonable cause since May 2015. The judgment was delivered on July 28 by Judge Aarti Bhardwaj of Family Court No. 1, Jaipur Metropolitan-First, on a divorce petition the husband had filed in March 2022 under Section 13(1) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.

Family court lawyer in Jaipur D.S. Shekhawat who represented the husband said that the couple had married in November 2012 at Narnaul in Haryana, and a son was born the following year. According to the husband’s petition, the wife picked quarrels over small matters soon after the marriage, pressured him and his family to get his grandfather’s ancestral land in Jaipur transferred to her name, threatened to implicate them in false cases when they refused, and finally left the matrimonial home with the child and her belongings on May 30, 2015, never to return.

In October 2016, the wife lodged an FIR against the husband and his family members at the women’s police station in Narnaul under Sections 498A, 406, 323 and 506 of the IPC. The husband was acquitted in that case in October 2019, and the wife’s appeal against the acquittal was dismissed by a sessions court in September 2021. Her application under Section 319 of the CrPC seeking to prosecute other members of his family was also rejected. Terming the prosecution a false case, the family court noted that it had forced the husband to remain in police custody and caused his family social, mental and financial suffering.

Contesting the petition, the wife denied the allegations and accused the husband and his family of harassing her over dowry demands, taunting her over her complexion and throwing her out of the house along with the child. She told the court that she did not want a divorce and was still prepared to live with her husband if he took her back respectfully, guaranteed her safety and paid the maintenance arrears, which she put at about Rs 5.6 lakh. She also alleged that the husband, who described himself as a student, had been earning well as a news anchor and concealing his income.

The court, however, found her allegations vague, unproved and contradictory, while observing that both sides had lied on certain points. It relied on the record of counselling proceedings at Narnaul in 2016, during which the wife agreed to return to the matrimonial home but later refused unless a 300 square yard plot in Jaipur and a share in the family’s land were first registered in her name. The husband’s petition for restitution of conjugal rights filed around the same time was withdrawn after the dowry FIR was lodged. The court concluded that the wife had left of her own accord over her insistence on the property, foiled every attempt at reconciliation and made no effort to resume the marriage, which established both cruelty and desertion.

Deciding both issues in the husband’s favour, the court declared the marriage solemnised in November 2012 dissolved by a decree of divorce under Section 13(1)(i-a) and 13(1)(i-b) of the Hindu Marriage Act, and directed the parties to bear their own costs.