The Supreme Court rejected the plea of an elderly Indian couple, citing the traditional importance of marriage.
According to news agency PTI, the Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by an 89-year-old man seeking a divorce from his 82-year-old wife because it was believed that marriage was still a “pious, spiritual, and invaluable emotional life net between couples in Indian society.”
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On October 10, the Supreme Court issued the order. A bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M Trivedi passed the order on October 10.
The 89-year-old brought the case before the Supreme Court to overturn the Punjab and Haryana high court’s ruling, which had overturned a Chandigarh district court ruling that had granted him a divorce in 1996.
The separated couple got married in Amritsar in 1963 following Sikh traditions, and the couple had three children: two daughters and a son. The man is a licensed doctor who served in the Indian Air Force before retiring, and his wife was a teacher.
When the husband moved to Madras in January 1984 and the wife did not go with him, things between them started to get nasty. According to PTI, she opted to first reside with her in-laws before moving in with her son.
The man claims that she “treated him cruelly and deserted him” by refusing to travel with him to Madras and then failing to look after him despite his heart condition. Additionally, he claimed that his wife had complained about him to Air Force officials, damaging his reputation.
The man claimed that since 1996, he has been living apart from his wife and that their marriage had “irretrievably broken down” in his petition to the Supreme Court.
The wife argued that she did not want to die with the tag of “divorcee” and that she had done everything possible to respect her marriage to the elderly man. She also stated that she was still prepared to care for her husband with the help of her son
She pleaded with the Supreme Court not to overturn the high court’s decision, arguing that a simply extended period of separation did not amount to an irretrievable breakdown of the marriage and that her husband had failed to establish any basis for “cruelty” or “desertion.”
The Supreme Court acknowledged in its ruling that many other relationships in society are based on marriage partnerships and benefit from their existence.
“Therefore, it would not be desirable to accept the formula of ‘irretrievable breakdown of marriage’ as a strait-jacket formula for the grant of relief of divorce under Article 142 of the Constitution of India,” the court stated in its ruling, according to PTI.The bench observed that despite her husband’s complete animosity towards the couple’s three children, the mother had always upheld a sacred bond and cared for them.
Therefore, the Supreme Court denied the husband’s request to dissolve the marriage.
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