Husband’s “Relative Impotency”: High Court Annuls Marriage (image-pixabay)
The Bombay High Court annulled the marriage of a young couple on the grounds of non-consummation by a 27-year-old husband. The Aurangabad bench of the High Court, noting that the agony of frustration cannot be ignored, granted divorce to the couple.
The 26-year-old wife walked out of the marriage after she claimed that her husband showed no interest in her and failed to establish a sexual relation due to his ‘relative impotency’.
A bench division of justices Vibha Kankanwadi and S G Chapalgaonkar in the judgment on April 15 also noted that this was a fit case to help “young sufferers of marriage” who could not connect with each other mentally, emotionally or physically.
The term relative impotency denotes a situation where a person is incapable of sexual intercourse with a particular person though they are capable of sexual intercourse with another person.
The couple got married on March 13, 2023 but the marriage ended by the end of the month when the wife left her matrimonial home. The petitioner before the family court claimed that the marriage brought her agony and a sense of being deceived by her husband and therefore, she couldn’t continue the marriage beyond 17 days.
The high court in its order stated that relative impotency is a known phenomenon and is different from the normal impotency, which means the inability to copulate in general. The court further added that there could be various physical and mental causes for such relative impotency.
“In the present case, it can be easily gathered that the husband has relative impotency qua (towards) the wife. The reason for non-consummation of the marriage is this apparent relative impotency of the husband,” the HC said.
The man may have blamed the wife initially for non-consummation as he was hesitant to admit he had relative impotency towards her, it added. The man initially filed an affidavit before the family court stating that the marriage was not consummated but blamed the woman for it.
Later he submitted a written statement admitting relative impotency. The wife initially submitted an application seeking the family court to decide the divorce plea at the admission stage itself as per provisions of the Civil Procedure Code instead of conducting a trial. However the family court rejected the application. The couple then decided to approach the High Court.
