KOLKATA: Friends and family of a married woman staying at the house of her husband against his will for a long period can amount to cruelty, Calcutta high court said on Dec 19 while granting divorce to a man on grounds of cruelty.
“Such imposition of friend and family by the woman on her husband at his quarters against his will, sometimes even when the respondent (wife) was herself not there, over a continuous period of time, can definitely be constituted as cruelty, since it might very well have made life impossible for the appellant, which would come within the broader purview of cruelty,” the court held.
The divorce application was filed by the husband in 2008 after three years of marriage. They got married in West Bengal’s Nabadwip and moved to Kolaghat in 2006 where the husband worked. In 2008, the wife moved to Narkeldanga in Kolkata, claiming it was more convenient for her as the place was closer to her workplace at Sealdah. But during cross-examination, she claimed to have moved out due to a “helpless situation”.
However, even after the wife moved out of the husband’s Kolaghat house in 2008, her family and a friend kept staying there. The wife later moved to Uttarpara in 2016.
The husband pleaded cruelty on the grounds that they were living separately and alleged that she was not interested in a conjugal relationship or having a child.
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