Though allowing divorce to a man who was mentally tortured by his wife for 17 years, the Supreme Court has fixed a price for buying peace with the woman at Rs 1.50 crore.
Granting divorce to the tortured husband, a Bench of Justices Adarsh K Goel and Deepak Gupta directed the man Raj Talreja, a resident of Udaipur, to arrange a sum of Rs 50 lakh to be set apart as permanent alimony for his wife Kavita and even ordered him to provide her a residential flat valuing upto Rs 1 crore.
The order was passed on Monday with a timeframe of three months fixed by the Court for deposit of the alimony. With regard to the residential flat, the Bench directed that the wife can continue to stay at her present residence, owned by the mother of the husband. The couple has a son who is married. Both son and daughter-in-law stay with Kavita in the same house while the aggrieved husband Raj has been staying with his parents in a separate accommodation. Interestingly, the son has been assisting the father in business and the latter, in turn, has fulfilled all his paternal obligations by regularly paying maintenance to his wife.
In these circumstances, the Court was asked to decide as to whether the conduct of wife in spreading false accusations against husband will amount to cruelty. The Bench said, “Though we have held that the acts of the wife in filing false complaints against the husband amounts to cruelty, we are, however, not oblivious to the requirements of the wife to have a decent house where she can live...some permanent arrangement has to be made for her alimony and residence.”
The apex court said that cruelty can never be defined “with exactitude” and what it is, will depend upon the facts and circumstances of each case. “Mere filing of complaints is not cruelty, if there are justifiable reasons to file the complaints. Merely because no action is taken on the complaint or after trial the accused is acquitted may not be a ground to treat such accusations of the wife as cruelty within the meaning of the Hindu Marriage Act.
“However, if it is found that the allegations are patently false, then there can be no manner of doubt that the said conduct of a spouse levelling false accusations against the other spouse would be an act of cruelty,” the Bench held.