A division bench of Justice Nitin W Sambre and Justice Sharmila U Deshmukh of Bombay High Court while dismissing the plea of husband seeking divorce from his wife, deprecated that the primitive mindset of society expecting the woman to solely shoulder the responsibilities needs to be change.

“In modern society, the burden of household responsibilities has to be borne by both husband and wife equally. The primitive mindset expecting the woman of the house to solely shoulder the household responsibilities needs to undergo a positive change”.

The plea was filed by a husband against the order of the family court for rejecting his divorce petition.

The couple got married in the year 2010 and they had a child in the year 2013, however, due to certain issues between them, they started living separately since 2013.

The husband alleged that his wife was not doing any household work and was constantly in touch with her mom on the phone. Due to which he had to leave for work without food.

Justice observed that both the spouses were working but expecting wife to do all household work which reflects as regressive mind.

“The admitted position is that both the appellant and the respondent were employed and as such, expecting the respondent to do all the household work reflects a regressive mindset”

The bench observed that putting restriction on wife to curtail her contact with her parents subjected to mental cruelty.

“Being in contact with one’s parents cannot by any stretch of imagination be construed as inflicting mental agony on the other party. In our view, putting restrictions on her to curtail her contact with her parents, has, in fact, subjected her to mental cruelty apart from physical cruelty which has been established by incidents in 2011”.

The husband filed an application for divorce when his wife refused to cohabit with him which is rejected by the family court on the ground that there were no genuine attempts made by the parties to resume cohabitation, after which the husband filed an appeal in the High Court.

While dismissing the plea of the husband, bench said “In our opinion, cruelty generally refers to a series of acts occurring frequently that result in causing such mental or physical agony to the wronged party that the court would be left with no option but to dissolve the marriage, which is not so in the instant case”.