The Supreme Court has declined a plea filed by an 89-year-old man seeking a divorce from his 82-year-old wife, saying that the institution of marriage is still considered to be a “pious, spiritual and invaluable emotional life net between couples in Indian society”, news agency PTI reported. The order was passed by a bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M Trivedi on October 10. The 89-year-old had filed the plea before the Supreme Court challenging the decision of the Punjab and Haryana high court, which had reversed a Chandigarh district court order granting divorce to him in 1996.
The estranged couple had married according to Sikh rites in 1963 in Amritsar and had three children – two daughters and one son. The man is a qualified doctor and retired from the Indian Air Force, while his wife is a former teacher.
The relations between them turned sour when the husband was posted in Madras in January 1984 and the wife did not join him. She preferred to stay initially with her in-laws and later with her son, according to PTI.
The man claims that she “treated him cruelly and deserted him” by not joining him in Madras, and thereafter not taking care of him though he had a heart problem. He also alleged that his wife filed complaints against him before Air Force authorities, maligning his image.
In his plea before the Supreme Court, the man argued that he has been living separately from his wife since 1996 and that their marriage has already been “irretrievably broken down”.
The wife argued that she did not want to die with the stigma of being a “divorcee” and claimed that she had made all efforts to respect her marriage with the octogenarian and that she was still ready to look after her husband with the assistance of her son.
Urging the Supreme Court not to interfere with the order of the high court, she submitted that a mere long period of separation could not be tantamount to an irretrievable breakdown of the marriage and that her husband has failed to make out any ground either of ‘cruelty’ or ‘desertion’.
In its order, the Supreme Court noted that several other relationships stem and thrive on the basis of matrimonial relationships in society.
“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 bench said in its order, according to PTI.