Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh): The High Court of Chhattisgarh has ruled that a husband is entitled to divorce if his religious beliefs are persistently mocked by his wife, asserting that a husband’s yagya remains incomplete without his wife according to Hindu religious texts.
The court made the statement while upholding the divorce granted to a Hindu husband by a family court, rejecting the appeal of his Christian wife.
The case was heard by Justice Rajni Dubey and Justice Sanjay Jaiswal on Wednesday. The couple, Neha and Vikas Chandra, married on February 7, 2016, in accordance with Hindu customs. Neha, who followed Christianity prior to their marriage, began ridiculing Hindu beliefs and deities shortly after their wedding, which led to Vikas feeling insulted and ultimately filing for divorce.
Neha, a resident of Karanjia in Dindori district of Madhya Pradesh, was married to Vikas Chandra, a resident of Bilaspur on February 7, 2016 as per Hindu customs.
Despite Vikas’s requests for her to embrace Hindu customs, Neha continued to identify as a Christian, eventually returning to Bilaspur after spending some time in Delhi with Vikas. The behavior prompted Vikas to seek legal recourse, and the family court ruled in his favor, granting the divorce.
During the High Court proceedings, Neha acknowledged that she had not participated in any religious rituals with her husband over the last decade, instead opting to attend church services. Vikas testified that her actions repeatedly hurt his religious sentiments and insulted his deities.
The High Court upheld the family court’s decision, emphasizing that the wife's treatment of her husband constituted mental cruelty, particularly given the expectation of a wife to participate equally in religious activities. In the Court's view, such treatment of a wife – who is expected to be a 'co-wife' – amounts to mental cruelty towards a devout Hindu husband. The court noted that both the Mahabharata and Manusmriti highlight the wife’s integral role in performing yagyas. The judges concluded that Neha’s actions warranted the rejection of her appeal, affirming the family court’s decree.
