Supreme Court: Dealing with the case where the husband had sought divorce from his wife on the ground that she was forcing him to leave his parents as he was proving them financial support, the Court said that in a Hindu society, it is a pious obligation of the son to maintain the parents. If a wife makes an attempt to deviate from the normal practice and normal custom of the society, she must have some justifiable reason and hence, the Karnataka High Court erred in holding that mere monetary consideration was a justifiable reason to separate the husband from his parents.
The Bench of A.R. Dave and L. Nageswara Rao, JJ added that no son would like to be separated from his old parents and other family members, who are also dependent upon his income, the Court also said that the persistent effort of the wife to constrain the husband to be separated from the family would be torturous for the husband and will constitute as an act of ‘cruelty’.
The husband had also contended that the wife had levelled serious allegations against him regarding his character and about his extra-marital relationship with the maid named ‘Kamla’. However, it was found that no maid named Kamla worked in their house. Hence, the Court said that except for the baseless and reckless allegations, there is not even the slightest evidence that would suggest that there was something like an affair of the husband with the maid named by the wife. On this the Court said that to suffer an allegation pertaining to one’s character of having an extra-marital affair is quite torturous for any person – be it a husband or a wife and amounts to mental cruelty. [Narendra v. K. Meena, 2016 SCC OnLine SC 1114, decided on 06.10.2016]
