The Calcutta High Court held that occasional meeting between spouses does not constitute joint life as a husband and wife, thereby permitting divorce based on irretrievable breakdown of marriage.
In the case of *Munni Kanta Debi vs. Bhabani Charan Benerjee*, the Calcutta High Court stated that episodic or isolated visits between the husband and wife cannot be said to constitute a joint conjugal life. Accordingly, the court granted a decree of divorce to the parties who were living separately for nearly a decade. According to the judgment, “a marriage without affection and feeling cannot be supported.”
The case was heard by the Division Bench of Justices S. Bhattacharyya and S. Bhattacharya. The Court held, “Irretrievable breakdown of marriage itself amounts to cruelty within the Special Marriage Act.” In dissolving the marriage, the Court granted the husband restricted visitation rights to see his minor child once a month.
The couple had married in 2007 and were living in Howrah. They have one son, who was born in 2011. The wife, being a medical professional, had been posted in various districts of West Bengal. She had moved to the High Court as the lower court
Expressing its observations, the High Court said that the respondent parties were living apart since 2015 and the husband could not establish any cohabitation with the wife except making occasional visits. The High Court also said that the husband could not prove the video-conference evidence even when it had been disallowed by the lower court on reasons that were not adequate.
The Court held that the point where mutual trust, companionship, and empathy disappear, there is no legally or socially significant purpose in continuing the marriage, and thus the marriage is held to be irretrievably broken.
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