The Hindu : New Delhi News : Court asks couple to reunite after 17 years

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Saturday, Apr 19, 2008
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Court asks couple to reunite after 17 years

New Delhi: Seventeen years after Jatinderbir Singh’s wife allegedly deserted him and the two were divorced in a sessions court, the Supreme Court wants the couple to reunite.

A bench of Justices B.N. Aggrawal and G.S. Singhvi upheld a High Court judgement quashing the sessions court’s decision to grant them divorce.

“We do not find any ground to interfere with the impugned order,” the bench observed while referring to the judgement passed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

The apex court also dismissed Mr. Singh’s plea that the marriage had broken down irretrievably and attempts for reconciliation would be futile.

The High Court, on July 19, 2006, quashed the order of the Additional Sessions Judge, who by an order dated August 16, 1999, passed a decree for divorce.

The Additional Sessions Judge held that Mr. Singh’s wife, Sukhwinder Kaur, had left home in May 1991 and did not return. “It has been abundantly proved on record that the respondent [Sukhwinder Kaur] deserted the petitioner for a continuous period of more than six years,” the Judge observed.

However, Ms. Kaur appealed in the High Court which set aside the divorce decree on the ground that there was no evidence to support the allegation that she deserted her husband.

The High Court took the view that though Kaur was willing to go back to her husband with their daughter, Mr. Singh took the stance that he would rather die than take her back.

In his SLP in the Supreme Court, Mr. Singh through his counsel Bhupender Yadav, claimed that right from the early days of their marriage in May 1991, Ms. Kaur stayed away from home from and went to her parents’ house directly from her workplace.

The husband claimed that Ms. Kaur threatened to get his family members killed if he objected to her behaviour.

The appellant cited an apex court ruling in 2006 in the Naveen Kohli vs Neelu Kohli case in which it was held that “once a marriage has broken down beyond repair, it would be unrealistic for the law not to take notice of the fact and it would be harmful to society.”

However, the apex court felt that there was no reason to interfere with the judgement passed by the High Court. — PTI

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