Failure to dispel doubt of infidelity is cruelty, grounds for divorce: Delhi HC

When a spouse invests emotional intimacy, secrecy, and sustained communication in another person outside the marriage while maintaining a façade of propriety, it causes profound mental anguish, humiliation, and emotional abandonment, the court observed

New Delhi

The bench delivered the judgment while dealing with a woman’s petition challenging a family court’s November 2022 order granting divorce to her husband on the ground of cruelty. (Representative photo)

The Delhi High Court has ruled that a spouse’s continuous behaviour that creates reasonable apprehensions of infidelity in the other’s mind, coupled with the failure to dispel such doubts, amounts to mental cruelty and constitutes sufficient grounds for divorce.

A bench of justices Anil Kshetarpal and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar, in its October 29 order that was released on Friday, observed that when a spouse invests emotional intimacy, secrecy, and sustained communication in another person outside the marriage while maintaining a façade of propriety, it causes profound mental anguish, humiliation, and emotional abandonment.

Infidelity, whether physical or emotional, corrodes the very foundation of marriage, and inflicts harm on the body and psyche of the aggrieved spouse, the court said in the verdict authored by justice Shankar.

“Infidelity need not always be proved through direct or ocular evidence. Continuous conduct that perpetuates a situation wherein more than a mere reasonable apprehension of unfaithfulness or moral betrayal persists, coupled with the failure of the spouse who is alleged to have caused the genesis and continuity of such a condition of the mind, to effectively dissipate or dissuade through their testimony, the existence of such a state of affairs, constitutes mental cruelty within the meaning of Section 13(1)(ia) of the HMA (Hindu Marriage Act),” the court said.

It added, “Infidelity, whether physical or emotional, corrodes the very foundation of marriage. It inflicts harm not upon the body but upon the psyche of the aggrieved spouse; a slow, silent, and devastating form of cruelty that destroys mutual trust and companionship.”

The bench delivered the judgment while dealing with a woman’s petition challenging a family court’s November 2022 order granting divorce to her husband on the ground of cruelty.

In the present case, the couple married in October 1991 and had a daughter. However, the husband in 2012 filed for divorce on the grounds of cruelty, asserting that his wife had developed an extramarital relationship with two individuals, was excessively materialistic, and money-minded. The family court in 2022 granted a divorce to the husband, concluding that the woman’s continuous and unexplained communications with the two individuals, coupled with her evasive deposition and inconsistent statement, amounted to mental cruelty.

In her petition before the high court, the woman contended that her husband’s allegations of an extramarital affair were based solely on phone bills linked to a mobile number registered in his name and emails sent from a computer under his control, arguing that such material could not be considered direct or reliable evidence of adultery. She further stated that her interactions with the men were confined to business matters.

Opposing the petition, the man claimed that his wife’s deliberate and continued extramarital affairs with two men, despite his repeated pleas for her to change her behaviour, caused him immense pain and made their marriage unbearable. He further stated that during her testimony before the family court, his wife gave evasive answers, failed to deny the allegations specifically, and even admitted to having a prolonged relationship with the two men.

The court ruled in the man’s favour, observing that the woman had failed to produce evidence to support her defence and that her explanations were merely a façade meant to obscure the true nature of her relationships with the two men. The woman’s conduct, the court said, could not be dismissed as a mere act of social cordiality or innocent indiscretion.