'No sex grounds for divorce'

2006-03-22 14:17

New Delhi - A sexless marriage constitutes cruelty and is grounds for divorce, India's top court has ruled.

The Supreme Court made the ruling in response to a petition by a woman who sought a divorce on the grounds that her husband was schizophrenic and they couldn't have a normal sex life, her lawyer said Wednesday.

"The court ruled that one of the necessary outcomes of a Hindu marriage is procreation, and non-consummation would be added as a ground for divorce," senior lawyer Kamini Jaiswal said.

"The court also said that non-consummation of a marriage was a mental torture," Jaiswal said.

She said that previously sexless marriages could be declared "null and void", in which case the man and woman would be considered single rather than divorced, and the woman could not claim maintenance.

And a woman has been allowed in the past to file for divorce within a year of marriage if her husband was impotent, Jaiswal said.

However, the latest ruling meant a woman would be able to file for divorce at any stage on grounds that her marriage is devoid of sexual relations.

The new ruling would also apply to cases where a person did not have a medical problem, but still deliberately abstained from sex with their partner.

The woman first filed a petition for divorce in 1994. Her request was turned down by a lower court, which said that her husband did not have schizophrenia and also that there were insufficient grounds for cruelty.

The Supreme Court, however, took into account evidence by doctors and overturned the lower court's order, saying the woman had been relieved from the "shackles of a dead marriage".

- SAPA