Daughter deposes against mother to get dad divorce

Saurabh Malik
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, October 21

A daughter has stepped into the witness box to depose against her mother for getting her father a divorce. “A daughter will be the last person to falsely depose against her mother, that too in the manner in which she has done,” the Punjab and Haryana High Court asserted.

The assertion came as the Division Bench of Justice Rajan Gupta and Justice Manjari Nehru Kaul upheld the judgment and decree passed four years ago by the Mohali Additional District Judge.

The court, vide the judgment and decree dated September 3, 2015, had allowed the petition filed by the respondent-husband under the provisions of the Special Marriage Act, 1954. As a result, the marriage between the parties was dissolved on the ground of cruelty.

The Bench, during the course of the hearing, was told that the marriage between the parties was solemnised in May 1998 under the Special Marriage Act as the respondent-husband was a Christian and the appellant-wife a Hindu. Two children were born out of the wedlock.

The husband pleaded that his wife’s behaviour was cruel and unbecoming right from the beginning of their marriage as she would often quarrel with him on trivial issues. He tolerated the unbecoming behaviour of his wife with the hope that she would mend her ways, but her behaviour worsened with the passage of time.

He added that his wife would shirk her matrimonial obligations and would not even perform basic household chores. She would go to the extent of intentionally hiding medicines of her parents-in-law to harass them and would also physically assault them. They would lock themselves up in their room to save themselves from her wrath and would refrain from disclosing the harassment and torture meted out to them to their son.

Refuting the allegations, the wife, in turn, alleged that her husband, in fact, was cruel and indifferent to her. He did not even bother to get her treated in a hospital after she sustained head injuries in an accident. After hearing the rival contentions, the Bench added that the daughter stepped into the witness box and corroborated her father’s version about her mother’s cruelty and misbehaviour in her deposition. 

Dismissing the appeal, the Bench added that her testimony came across as truthful and trustworthy. “The act and conduct of the wife to say the least is reprehensible not only towards her husband and children, but also against her old and aged parents-in-law, which would have naturally caused immense agony to the husband,” the Bench said.