Rajasthan family court says no toilet in home is ‘cruelty to women’, grants divorce
The woman’s in-laws ignored her appeals to build a toilet at home, forcing her to return to her parents’ place.
A family court in Rajasthan’s Bhilawara district on Friday granted a woman divorce while ruling that having no toilet at home is cruelty to women.
Commenting on the ‘mental torture’ that women have to deal with while going to defecate in the open in absence of toilets in their homes, justice Rajendra Kumar Sharma termed it as a disgrace for the society.
The woman, who was married to a family in Atun village of Bhilwara district in 2011 had moved a divorce petition to the family court in 2015 on the grounds that the house of her husband didn’t have any toilet.
The woman had said in her application that when she told her in-laws about the difficulties she had to face while going to defecate in the open, they didn’t listen to her.
“Has it ever pained us that our mothers and sisters have to go to defecate in the open? Women in villages have to wait for dark to venture out in order to relieve and as a result has to bear with physical pain,” justice Sharma said in the judgment.
The judgment further added that not having toilets in homes is a disgrace in the 21st century.
“It is an irony that people who spend a lot of money on alcohol, tobacco and mobile phones, don’t have toilets in their homes,” the judgment read.
The court had also asked the family of the petitioner’s in-laws to provide evidence of toilet in their house which they failed to furnish.
Due to the absence of a toilet in her marital home, the woman was living at her parent’s house for the last two years.