Terming the approach adopted by a trial court too narrow and pedantic in a particular matrimonial dispute case, the Delhi high court has said such a dispute is not just a legal one. It is not just a family’s problem but a social concern as well and should not be viewed from the prism of legal technicalities alone. The court said such issues should be dealt with sensitively with a pragmatic approach.
Hearing a case against a trial court order which had dismissed the petition of a wife seeking restitution of her conjugal rights while granting divorce to her husband on the ground of cruelty, a bench of Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice V Kameswar Rao said: ‘In an adversarial litigation, which we follow in India, if a judge were to find that a counsel’s standard has not reached the desired level and the litigation ceases to be adversarial, the judge must step in. We often use the phrase that a judge is a match referee.
We do not use the phrase that the judge is an umpire. Now, an umpire has a static position in the game of cricket. But a referee, as is to be found in a game of football, runs up and down in the field keeping a hawk’s eye on the football to ensure that nobody fouls.’
The couple had got married in 1999 and has two children. Theirs was a love marriage which was not approved by the husband’s side of the family initially. Unfortunately, relations soured with the passage of time and the husband sought dissolution of the marriage alleging cruelty while the wife sought restitution of her conjugal rights. The husband went to the trial court for divorce claiming that his wife treated him with cruelty, while the wife claimed that it was the husband who mistreated her and that she is ready to forgive him and carry on with the marriage. The trial court granted divorce and dismissed the case of the wife, who approached the high court.
Discussing their case in detail, the high court came to the conclusion that the wife has indeed caused mental cruelty to the husband and affirmed the decree of divorce given to the husband by the trial court.
It, however, criticised the trial court for its narrow and pedantic approach. It pointed out that in the trial court the wife’s counsel did not argue the case properly, and the trail court should have stepped in.