Kerala High Court Upholds Marital Rape Case As A Valid Reason For Claiming Divorce

The court Kerala High Court upheld marital rape as a viable reason for divorce.

A division bench comprising Justice A Muhamed Mustaque and Justice Kauser Edappagath of the Kerala high court recently stated that occurrences of marital rape occur when the husband believes that the body of his wife belongs to him, but such a concept seems to have no role in today's social jurisprudence.

The court explained the concept of marital rape, as it took place when a husband treats his wife's body as if it belongs to him and does sexual acts against her will and as the law does not acknowledge marital rape, it does not preclude the court from considering it a form of cruelty and granting a divorce. As a result, the court claimed that marital rape can be considered as a good reason to uphold divorce.

The remarks were made as the court dismissed the husband's petitions to the high court against the family court's ruling in a dispute that had been dragging on for over a decade.

A woman's sorrow was caused by her husband's obsessive desire for cash and sex. She had renounced and abandoned all of her monetary claims in her desire to secure a divorce. The court noted that the cry of a woman for divorce had been heard in the temple of justice for more than a decade.

A petition for divorce on the grounds of cruelty was granted by the family court, against which an appeal was launched in the high court.

However, the woman was allegedly harassed in various ways, according to the complaint. She was also pressured for money, and her father is said to have paid the husband 77 lakh on several occasions. The woman reportedly claimed she was compelled to have sex while she was ill, bedridden, and even on the day the husband's mother passed away.