Manas Dasgupta
Ahmedabad, September 9
It took 28 years for the Gujarat High Court, besides five years in lower courts, to settle a divorce petition and legalise the lives of three children from the second marriage. But the man, now a retired insurance company employee, will have to pay Rs 17 lakh as alimony.
Dhanjibhai Parmar (65) had married Indiraben in 1978 and had a son from her five years later. But the marriage went sour and Dhanjibhai filed for divorce in 1986. By the time the hearing came up, Indiraben had left home due to “domestic violence”.
As she claimed later that she was not aware about the divorce petition, she did not turn up in the court and the civil court granted Dhanjibhai ex parte divorce in February 1988 on the ground that his wife had “deserted him”. Within a month of getting divorce, Dhanjibhai married Ramilaben and due course had three children from her.
Seven months after the ex parte divorce, Indiraben had approached the court challenging the divorce and claimed that she did not desert her husband but could not live in her matrimonial home because of “cruelty” of her husband. The case was reopened and finally in 1991, the city civil court changed its earlier award and annulled his divorce jeopardising his second marriage and legality of her three children.
Dhanjibhai approached the High Court against the civil court’s revised order, but it remained pending till last week. When finally it came up, the court realised that it would be futile to hang on with the legality of the divorce petition. At the advice of the court for an amicable settlement among the contesting parties, Indiraben agreed not to “contest” the divorce case.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/307CBzz
via Today’s News Headlines
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