Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh high court has ruled that denial to consummate marriage or to have sexual relations with the husband by the wife amounts to mental cruelty and is a legal ground for seeking divorce.
A division bench of the high court comprising Justices Sheel Nagu and Vinay Saraf has set aside the order of the trial court of November 2014 that held that the failure on the part of the wife to consummate marriage cannot be a ground for divorce.
“We are unable to accept the findings of the trial court on the issue of absence of consummation of marriage or physical intimacy. The trial court has wrongly held that failure on the part of the wife to consummate the marriage cannot be a ground for divorce, the high court verdict delivered on January three said.
The division bench has held that the wife had refused to consummate the marriage from the date of the wedding on July 12, 2006, until the husband left India on July 28, 2006.
The husband was hopeful to consummate the marriage after solemnising the wedding, but the wife had refused to consummate the marriage, the high court bench has observed.
“Certainly the act of the respondent (wife) amounts to mental cruelty”, the court ruled.
The court, however, observed that there can ‘never be any straight jacket formula or fixed parameters for determining mental cruelty in matrimonial matters’ and held that an “Appropriate way to adjudicate the case would be to evaluate it on its peculiar facts”.
