The Delhi High Court has granted divorce to celebrity chef Kunal Kapur on grounds that his wife’s conduct towards him was devoid of dignity and empathy.
The Division Bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Justice Neena Bansal Krishna on Tuesday allowed Kunal’s plea for divorce on grounds of cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act.
The High Court, after hearing arguments from both sides, observed that such nature of one spouse towards the other brought disgrace to the very essence of marriage and there existed no possible reason as to why he should be compelled to live while enduring the agony of living together
Setting aside the trial court order of October 1, 2018, it said the family court had erred in not allowing Kapur’s plea for divorce.
Kapur got married in 2008 and a son was born out of wedlock in 2012. The petitioner contended that his wife was in the habit of making calls to the police to threaten him and his family.
He alleged that in September 2016, while he was shooting for MasterChef India at Yah Raj Studios, his wife barged into the studio with their minor son and created a ruckus at his workplace following which he got a restraining order against her.
Kapur said that since he had started gaining public attention, his wife threatened him to spread false rumours to the media and register false criminal complaints against him and his parents.
On one occasion, his wife even slapped him just before he was to leave for his shoot, added the plea.
Kapur’s wife denied the allegations and said that she compromised her professional career to assist her family and her husband.
She added that her in-laws regularly taunted her for having a job rather than doing the household work and repeatedly humiliated her for petty reasons as she did not fit into their conservative definition of an ideal daughter-in-law.
After listening to the arguments, the High Court noted that it was a settled position of law that making reckless, defamatory, humiliating and unsubstantiated allegations in public against a spouse amounted to cruelty.
It noted that within two years of marriage, the appellant had established himself as a celebrity chef, which was a reflection of his hard work & determination, and it would not have been possible had he been the one who was dependent on his spouse or in-laws for his necessities.
Considering the aforesaid facts, it was only prudent to observe that these were mere allegations made by the respondent to disrepute the appellant in the eyes of the High Court. Such unsubstantiated claims had an effect on one’s reputation and therefore, amounted to cruelty.
The Court further said that though a woman cannot be expected to work for the whole household, however, when a woman took up the responsibilities of the house out of her free will, she did so out of sheer love for her family and no price could be put on it.
The Bench noted that it was often a natural consequence of motherhood that after the birth of a child, there was an increased sense of responsibility, which disrupted the work-life balance of any woman for which a husband could not be blamed.
However, in the present case, blaming the spouse for her personal failure was only perceived as a tactic to guilt the husband into fulfilling her unreasonable monetary demands, causing him great mental agony.
Senior Advocate Geeta Luthra, along with Advocates Kamakshi Gupta, Apoorva Maheshwari and Anushka Khaitan, appeared for Kunal Kapur.
Senior Advocate Sunil Mittal, along with Advocates Zeba Khair and Ananya Garg, represented his wife.