Late night phone calls can lead to divorce: HC

Finding that a wife’s telephone conversations at odd hours with her male friend without her husband’s consent and knowledge amounted to cruelty, a Bench of Kerala High Court has granted decree of divorce for an aggrieved NRI husband.
The petitioner had moved the division Bench after a Kannur family court rejected his plea for divorce. The court allowed legal separation, but rejected his plea for divorce due to their daughters’ future.
According to the petitioner, he had gone to Saudi Arabia in 2001 after his love marriage with the respondent when he got anonymous calls from Kerala about his wife’s extra-marital relation. On recieving details, he rushed back home in 2008. The exorbitant telephone bills at his house aroused his suspicion. A detailed call list showed prolonged calls made to a particular number late at night three days a week. On tracking the number, he found it belonged to his wife’s classmate.
With the evidence, he moved a divorce petition in the family court alleging adultery and cruelty. He moved an appeal in the HC in May this year. Though the wife impeded in the case, the court did not hear her. While delivering the verdict Friday, the Bench did not consider the family court’s reason for not granting divorce; that the couple’s twin daughters’ future was at stake. It found that the telephone calls at odd-hours to another man without the consent of the husband amounted to cruelty, inviting the decree of divorce.