Wife’s Resolve To See Husband Humiliated As An Alcoholic Is Serious: Madhya Pradesh High Court Dissolves Marriage On Ground Of Cruelty

The appellant husband had assailed the judgment passed in a Civil Suit by the Family Court rejecting his divorce petition filed on twin grounds of desertion and cruelty.

The Division Bench of Justice Vishal Dhagat and Justice Anuradha Shukla observed, “We are aware that the expression of mental cruelty is not static and, depending upon the human behaviour, new instances of cruelty may crop up. In the present case, wife has shown no hesitation in declaring that her husband/appellant was alcoholic and was thus given to intolerable habits. Admittedly, appellant/husband is a class IV employee while respondent/wife is in the Officer cadre, but both are serving in public sector. We have no hesitation in observing that normal bickering and quarrels between the parties, happening in their day to day life, can not be taken as a matter of grave concern, but a persistent resolved attitude of respondent-wife to see that her husband is ridiculed and humiliated in his social circle as an alcoholic is definitely a serious affair.”

Advocate Pradeep Kumar Naveria represented the Appellant, while Advocate Jagadish Prasad Kanojia represented the Respondent.

Factual Background

The parties got married in the year 2004, and two children were born to them. It was also admitted that both the appellant and respondent are public servants. The parties lived cordially for some years, and their relationship went bitter in 2015. There was no matrimonial relationship since then, and the respondent/wife started living separately. It was alleged that the wife’s behaviour with the appellant/husband was cruel, and she used to make false allegations against him. A request was, accordingly, made to allow the divorce petition.

The wife had filed a petition under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, in which a compromise was reached between the parties. The parties have been living separately since 2017. The issues were settled by the Court on the basis of pleadings, and after recording the evidence, the divorce petition was dismissed.

Reasoning

The Bench referred to various documents, such as the police complaint, settlement application, order passed by Lok Adalat, and held, “In none of these documents, it is mentioned that the appellant/husband had any habit of taking liquor. The last document was Ex. D/4, which was a complaint given to Police Paramarash Kendra on 24.02.2015 by respondent/wife, but it appears that police did not take any follow-up action on its basis. Thus, whatever wicked deeds were confessed by appellant/husband in the year 2011, under Ex.-D/2, had evidently no recurring episodes in subsequent years of his marital life.”

The Bench also noted that the aforesaid documents did not have any evidentiary value to support the allegation of addiction of the appellant/husband to liquor. “Thus, we may say that, against the propositions of civil law, the trial Court was admitting and placing reliance on evidence, which was definitely beyond the scope of pleadings”, it stated.

The Bench was of the view that the allegations of taking liquor made against the appellant/husband were not duly proved by the respondent/wife, and the trial Court committed an error in holding that the appellant/husband was given to alcoholism. Reference was also made to the judgment in Samar Ghosh v. Jaya Ghosh (2007), where an unjustified behaviour of one spouse actually affecting the physical or mental health of the other spouse was considered as a serious and grave case of mental cruelty.

“In the case on hand, the wife, in order to avoid marital obligations, has made unfounded allegation of habit of intoxication against the appellant/husband and has thus exposed him to social sham and contempt by compromising his social position of a public servant. Her act of baseless accusation definitely has a decisive impact on the future relationship of the parties and in this state of facts, the dismissal of divorce petition was not legitimate and warranted”, it added.

The Bench thus allowed the appeal on the ground of cruelty committed by making false allegations of addiction to intoxication and also contesting the divorce petition despite being resolute in not resuming the cohabitation. The Bench thus set aside the impugned judgment and declared the marriage between the parties as dissolved.

Cause Title: A v. B (Neutral Citation: 2025:MPHC-JBP:52433)

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