SMS from wife gets man a divorce for cruelty

Saurabh Malik 

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 16

An SMS can get you a divorce. The Punjab and Haryana High Court has granted divorce to a man whose wife resorted to his character assassination by sending an objectionable SMS on his phone. The message, sent through their son, said he was living with another woman in the US and also had a child.

“This kind of SMS which attacked the character of the appellant-husband also constitutes the ingredient of mental cruelty for which the appellant deserves a decree of divorce,” the Bench of Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain and Justice Harnaresh Singh Gill ruled on an appeal by the husband, challenging the judgment and decree passed in May 2013 by a Sonepat family court.   

The Bench was told the marriage was solemnised in February 1997 and the couple was blessed with a child. The husband, among other things, alleged the wife started treating him with cruelty “as she refused to cook meals and forced him to live separately from his parents”.  

Constitutes mental harassment

This kind of SMS which attacked the character of the appellant-husband also constitutes mental cruelty for which the appellant deserves a decree of divorce. HC Bench