Kerala HC: Marital Rape Good Ground to Claim Divorce
Kochi: A split bench of the kerala high court decided on friday that marital rape is a valid cause for divorce in a landmark decision. “Marital rape” is defined as seeing a wife's body as something owed to the husband and engaging in sexual actions against her consent, according to a high court bench consisting of Justice A Muhamed Mustaque and Justice Kauser Edappagath.
The court stated that marriage and divorce must be governed by secular law and that the moment has come to reform the country's martial laws. “Just because the law does not regard marital rape as a criminal offence does not preclude a judge from seeing it as a form of cruelty and awarding a divorce. As a result, we believe that marital rape is a good reason to file for divorce,” it added.
The court issued the landmark ruling while dismissing two appeals filed by a man challenging a Family court order granting the divorce. The HC denied the husband's appeals against a Family court decision granting a petition for divorce based on cruelty and denying another petition by the spouse seeking conjugal rights.
The Family court ruled that the husband was treating the wife like a money-making machine, that she had accepted harassment for the sake of marriage, and that she opted to file a divorce petition when the harassment and cruelty became unbearable.