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What are your rights if women face cruelty in marriage?

What are your rights if women face cruelty in marriage?

To get married, women leave their everything behind. They leave their homes in order to make anybody’s else house, a home. They change their lifestyle, identity to settle in a new family.

In return all they ask for is a descent behavior towards her, love & support specifically from the husband & then from his family. There are 5 pillars on which every marriage stands. If these are not followed, any marriage would cease to exist.  They are –

  • Love
  • Trust
  • Honesty
  • Respect
  • Efforts

Respecting your partner is the basic yet foremost rule . But some men miserably fails to understand this. Sometimes, specifically in arrange marriage two people think the opposite. Their lifestyle, perspectives, beliefs are not aligned with each other. There occurs an issue of compatibility & understanding. Then, these men if not physically then mentally or emotionally starts torturing their wives. There are various ways in which these men tries to suppress their wives :-

  • Insulting them in front of their families.
  • Not respecting them.
  • Making them feel as if they are inferior to their husbands.
  • Misbehaving with them.
  • Having romantic connections with some other woman.
  • Treating them like a slave etc.

All these points are considered as cruelty towards your wives. Because of such incidents happening repetitively, has led the women to commit suicide. With the rising cases of suicides due to cruelty, Indian Courts have declared cruelty against women as a ground for divorce as well as under article 498A of IPC, it was declared as a punishable offense in 1983.

According to Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, Husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty—Whoever, being the husband or the relative of the husband of a woman, subjects such woman to cruelty shall be pun­ished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and shall also be liable to fine”.

 This means that if a man or his relative tries to torture his wife, they will be subjected to imprisonment extending upto 3 years along with a fine.

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According to section 498A- “cruelty” means-any willful conduct which is of such a nature as is likely to drive the woman to commit suicide or to cause grave injury or danger to life, limb or health (whether mental or physical) of the woman”

This means that any behavior with an intention of harming a woman’s physical or mental health or provoking her to commit suicide is considered as cruelty.

Cruelty as a ground of divorce

Earlier cruelty was never taken into consideration for making a ground for divorce. It was just a ground for judicial separation. But with 1976 amendment, cruelty is also considered as a ground for divorce under section 10(1) of Hindu Marriage Act.

The court has to investigate the reasons & the circumstances because of which the couple wants to get separated. After investigation & proving of cruelty the court then passes the decree of divorce.

We, LEAD INDIA LAW ASSOCIATES are in this realm from a very long period of time & have some successful solved marital disputes & divorces (Looking for Divorce Lawyers in Delhi or any other city of India) in our credit. For all queries related to marital disputes, contact us on our helpline number : +91 8800788535, we have domestic violence lawyer in delhi and Other cities of India

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