Cruelty as a ground for divorce

        Cruelty is a conduct such character that causes danger to life, limb or health, bodily or mental, or gives rise to an apprehension of such danger. Cruelty can be physical or mental.

Physical cruelty includes acts of violence, like causing physical injury to the partner’s body, limb or health or causing reasonable apprehension of the same. Injury to private parts amounts to physical cruelty.

Mental cruelty, on the other hand, is the conduct that inflicts mental trauma that may make it difficult for one party to live with the other. Demands of dowry, false accusation of adultery, willful and persistent refusal to have marital intercourse, false criminal charges, refusal to have children, fighting with mother in law, insulting in front of family and friends, drunkenness, threat to commit suicide, false allegation of insanity are some instances of mental cruelty. In Dastane v Dastane, the wife humiliated and abused her husband. She even physically abused their child.

Recently the Supreme Court has observed that the wife’s refusal to cohabit or refusal to cook for her husband, her demanding outside food at midnight are all instances of cruelty that will make it difficult for the husband to live with her.