Karnataka High Court Deems False Allegations of Adultery as Mental Agony

Overview: The Karnataka high court has observed that unsubstantiated adultery allegations made by a man against his wife, doubting the paternity of their child, amount to him inflicting mental cruelty on his wife.

In the latest verdict by the Karnataka High Court, Justices KS Mudagal and KV Aravind probed into a divorce petition put forwarded by the husband while making accusations about his wife on various grounds, including adultery, black magic, and administering drugs to deteriorate and weaken his health. The court found the husband's contentions to be not backed up by the evidence and drew the influence that his conduct inflicted mental cruelty and brutality upon his wife.

Karnataka HC Deems False Allegations of Adultery as Mental Agony

The ruling, while setting aside the divorce decree sought by the husband, held him answerable for causing mental agony and suffering to his wife through groundless allegations. The set of circumstances revolved around the husband's petition filed in 2003, drawing attention to reasons such as the wife's alleged adultery, frequent quarrels leading to differences of opinion, and allegations of practicing black magic.

The Court shoot down the husband's accusations of adultery, stating the absence of forensic evidence to hold up his allegations. Additionally, the accusations of black magic were discharged, the reason being, the lack of substantial evidence provided by the husband.

The Justices laid stress on the fact that such baseless allegations not only inflicted mental agony but also amounted to put through the wife to undue stress and hardship. They concluded that the husband's conduct did not give a justification for the breakdown of the marriage exclusively on the grounds of irretrievable breakdown.

The Court to a greater extent spotlighted that the husband's conduct in lodging fallacious petitions abused the legal process. Consequently, the High Court inflicted a cost of Rs. 10,000 on the husband, looking on his actions as damaging and detrimental to the paramountcy of the marriage institution and an abuse of legal proceedings.

In retaliation to the wife's appeal objecting to the lower court's decree, the High Court found deficient proofs to prove the alleged cruelty. The Court came to the conclusion that the breakdown of marriage cannot completely place reliance on allegations unsupported by substantial evidence.

The ruling underlined the need to substantiate accusations of cruelty and validated the wife's appeal by overturning the divorce decree. Ultimately, the Court emphasized the importance of evidence-based claims and castigated the husband's actions resulting in undue mental distress, leading to the dismissal of the divorce petition.

To sum up, the Karnataka High Court's verdict called attention the noteworthiness of visible evidence in legal proceedings and penalized the husband for filing false allegations, thus setting aside the divorce decree.