The Gujarat High Court has granted divorce to a woman after she renounced the material world and became a Jain nun three months ago during the pendency of her appeal challenging a family court order denying separation from her husband.
The woman took diksha, a Jain ritual of renunciation, and became a nun during the pendency of her appeal in the HC against the order of the Surendranagar district family court, where her plea for divorce from her husband on the grounds of cruelty was turned down.
A division bench of Justices AJ Desai and Rajendra Sareen, in their ruling dated January 30, said she would be entitled for divorce as she has “renounced the world by entering into a religious order.”
This was one of the grounds on which a solemnised marriage can be dissolved by a decree of divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the bench observed.
The woman’s petition stated that the appellant got married on February 23, 2017. However, from June 7 of the same year she stopped continuing married life with her husband after he started “inflicting cruelty” on her, said the plea.
A judicial magistrate’s court at Wadhwan, Surendranagar district, allowed the woman, who wanted to move out of her matrimonial home, to stay with her father and rejected the husband’s application for issuing a search warrant against her as sought under section 97 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (search for persons wrongfully confined).
On October 12, 2018, she filed for divorce at a family court, but her husband opposed the prayer and sought restitution of conjugal rights. The principal judge of the family court in Surendranagar dismissed her application after which she approached the HC.
While her plea was pending in the HC, the woman took diksha on November 28, 2022, and renounced the material world by entering into monastic life, her father informed the court in an affidavit.
