Refusing To Accept Paternity, Making False Allegations of Extra-Marital Affairs A Cruelty: Delhi High Court

In a recent judgement, the Delhi High Court held that a father denying the legitimacy or paternity of children and making “unsubstantiated allegations of extra-marital affair” against his wife constitutes an act of mental “cruelty” toward his spouse.

During the judgment held recently, a division Bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Neena Bansal Krishna said that such allegations constitute a grave assault on character, honour and reputation. The Court referring to an earlier Supreme Court verdict further stated that it is also the worst form of cruelty against the wife. 

The Court in its ruling explained that such “unsubstantiated assertions” cause mental pain, agony and suffering. It was enough to term such allegations to amount to the “reformulated concept of cruelty” in matrimonial law, the Court observed. 

The Court gave the verdict while upholding a family Court’s order refusing to grant the husband divorce on the group of cruelty by the wife. 

The parties had married in 2005. Seeking divorce, the husband in his petition against his wife alleged that the woman pressured him to marry her after she established a sexual relationship with him while he was drunk. Subsequently, the woman told him that she was pregnant, the man said. The husband had also alleged that his wife had illicit relationships with many other men. 

However, the Court while rejecting the allegations of the husband, the Court noted that the man could not prove his allegations against his wife.

The Court while upholding the family court verdict said, “The learned Family Judge has rightly observed that levelling of disgusting allegations of unchastity and indecent familiarity with a person outside wedlock and allegations of an extramarital relationship, constitute a grave assault on the character, honour, reputation, status as well as mental health of the spouse. Such scandalous, unsubstantiated aspersions of perfidiousness attributed to the spouse and not even sparing the children, would amount to the worst form of insult and cruelty, sufficient by disentitle the appellant from seeking divorce. This is one case where the appellant has himself committed the wrong and cannot be granted the benefit of divorce.” 

While Advocates Juhi Arora and Saral Arora appeared for the appellant-husband, advocate Karmanya Singh Choudhary represented the wife.