The Madhya Pradesh High Court recently dismissed a woman’s appeal against a family court order allowing her husband’s divorce plea on the ground of cruelty against him..A bench of Justices Vivek Rusia and Gajendra Singh took note of the allegation that the wife had been chatting about her sex life with her male friends. The Court observed that a wife or husband cannot indulge in undignified or indecent conversation with their friends after marriage.“No husband would tolerate that his wife is in conversation through mobile by way of these type of vulgar chatting. After marriage husband and wife both have freedom to have a conversation by way of mobile, chatting and other means with friends but the level of conversation should be decent and dignified, specially when it is with an opposite gender, which may not objectionable to the life partner,” it said.The Court added that if despite objection, the husband or wife continues with such activity, then it certainly will cause mental cruelty to the other partner. .After marriage husband and wife both have freedom to have a conversation by way of mobile, chatting and other means with friends but the level of conversation should be decent and dignified, specially when it is with an opposite gender, which may not objectionable to the life partnerMadhya Pradesh High Court.The couple had married in 2018. The husband is partially deaf and the fact was disclosed to the wife before marriage. However, the husband alleged that soon after marriage, the wife started misbehaving with his mother and after one and a half months, she left the matrimonial home.It was also alleged that she used to talk with “her old lovers on mobile” after marriage. The WhatsApp conversations were vulgar in nature, the husband said..On the contrary, the wife said that she had no such relation with the men in question. She also claimed that the husband had hacked her mobile phone and sent those messages to the two men to create evidence against her. She further argued that her right of privacy was violated by her husband who procured the chats from her phone. She further accused her husband of beating her and demanding dowry of ₹25 lakh..However, the High Court found that the woman’s father herself had admitted that his daughter was in the habit of talking to male friends.“The learned family court has observed that father of the appellant is a practicing lawyer having 40-50 years standing in the Bar but he did not enter into the witness box to deny the his statement given to the police. Ex.A/4 & A/6, the printout of the chatting of this appellant with Vinod and others, are not a decent conversation. There is no counter blast by way of FIR or complain of the Domestic violence etc. against the respondent, which establishes that the allegations of the respondent against wife are correct,” it said.Thus, the Court was in complete agreement with the decision of the family court to grant divorce to the man.“The respondent has certainly make out the case by way of evidence that the appellant committed mentally cruelty upon him. Learned counsel for the appellant has failed to point out any perversity in the findings recorded by the family court, hence the appeal is liable to be dismissed,” it said, while dismissing the appeal..Advocate Yash Pal Rathore represented the appellant (wife). Senior Advocate Virendra Sharma with Advocate Satish Yadav represented the respondent (husband)..[Read Judgment]
