A wife should be like Goddess Sita: Court

“A wife should be like Goddess Sita who followed her husband Lord Ram into the forest and stayed there for 14 years,” the Bombay high court said on Tuesday while hearing a plea filed by a Shipping Corporation of India employee seeking divorce on the ground of his wife’s unwillingness to shift to Port Blair with him.

“A wife should be like Goddess Sita who followed her husband Lord Ram into the forest and stayed there for 14 years,” the Bombay high court said on Tuesday while hearing a plea filed by a Shipping Corporation of India employee seeking divorce on the ground of his wife’s unwillingness to shift to Port Blair with him.

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The division bench of justices PB Majmudar and Anoop Mohta, however, felt that the couple should try to reconcile for their child’s future. “The couple should come together, at least for the sake of their only child,” the judges said.

While hearing the husband’s appeal, the court also tried to counsel the couple separated for last seven years. But the woman declined to accept any kind of settlement.

According to the husbands’ plea, the couple had an arranged marriage in 2000 — she is a city resident woman, while he hails from Kolkata. In 2005, when he was given posting at Port Blair he asked his wife to join him, but the woman refused, and the couple has lived separately since.

The husband had approached a family court seeking divorce primarily on the ground that she was refusing to move with him, but the court dismissed his petition in January and ordered him to pay monthly maintenance of Rs15,000 to his wife and his nine year-old child.

The husband moved HC in appeal, which has posted the matter for further hearing on June 21.