Wife’s involvement in dowry death case no ground for divorce: Jharkhand High Court

The Jharkhand High Court has denied a divorce request from a man who relied on his wife's conviction in a dowry-death case, arguing that even a serious criminal conviction cannot be a ground for ending a marriage. The bench of Justices Sujit Narayan Prasad and Sanjay Prasad emphasized that the wife was later acquitted by the high court in the criminal case.

The husband claimed that his first wife's children were tortured by his second wife, but the court rejected this allegation, finding that the children were actually residing with their maternal grandfather. The husband's counsel argued that the wife's conviction for abetting dowry death of her sister-in-law made her unsafe to continue the marriage, but the wife's counsel refuted these claims, stating that the family court had correctly dismissed the divorce petition due to lack of evidence.

The court further noted that both spouses had initiated criminal proceedings against each other within two years of the husband's divorce plea withdrawal. Ultimately, the court dismissed the husband's appeal, upholding the family court's decision that the statutory grounds of cruelty and desertion were not met.