Rare visits do not amount to shared conjugal life: HC

KOLKATA: "Once in a blue moon" visits do not amount to a shared conjugal life, Calcutta high court said on Jan 8 while granting divorce to a couple living apart since 2015, ruling that a marriage stripped of empathy cannot be sustained. The court dissolved the marriage but allowed the father monthly access to his son.A division bench of Justices Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya and Supratim Bhattacharya held that irretrievable breakdown of marriage qualifies as cruelty under Special Marriage Act, extending a 2023 Supreme Court ruling under Hindu marriage law to cases governed by the 1954 statute.The wife, a medical professional posted in Kurseong in north Bengal's Darjeeling district, approached the HC after a lower court in 2022 refused divorce on grounds of cruelty and desertion. "When the convivial atmosphere is lost in a matrimonial relationship and all empathy dries up, nothing remains in the marriage for it to be sustained," the court said, declaring the marriage irretrievably broken.The husband may meet the child once a month, on the first Sunday, for two hours at a public place.

Author: Srishti Lakhotia

---