|
Court: HIV grounds for divorce
02/11/2007 12:07 - (SA)
New Delhi - An Indian court has granted a man permission to divorce his HIV-positive wife on the grounds that he could no longer enjoy sex with her, a report said on Friday.
Judge Rajnish Bhatnagar found in favour of the unnamed husband noting that "marriage without sex is anathema", the Hindustan Times said.
"The disease being sexually communicable, the petitioner cannot be reasonably expected to live with her and lead a happy married life," Bhatnagar was quoted as saying.
The Delhi district court also held the petitioner's wife guilty of not disclosing her HIV positive state before marriage.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that people who are HIV-positive must inform future spouses.
Didn't know
The petitioner said he only came to know of his wife's HIV-positive state a year after their marriage when she had a pre-natal Aids test in 2001.
Government figures put the number of people in India with HIV/Aids at between two million and 3.1 million people, while UNAids estimates there were 5.7 million cases in 2006.
A 2005 UNaids report found a significant number of new infections were among married women who were infected by their husbands.
Aids activists had mixed reactions to Bhatnagar's ruling.
"I do not personally agree with the idea of someone seeking divorce just on the ground that his wife is HIV-positive but it is a matter of personal choice," activist Dushyant Meher told the Times of India.
Another activist Anjali Gopalan, executive director of the Salaam Balak Trust, noted that women had rarely asked for divorce from HIV-positive husbands.
"It's a difficult case to comment on... the court has followed the law which accepts that a communicable disease can be grounds for granting divorce," she said.
- AFP
|
News
