A woman’s disinclination to cook food cannot be considered as a valid reason for granting divorce, the Madurai bench of Madras High Court has ruled.

Dismissing an appeal filed by a Kanyakumari-based engineer, who had sought divorce from his wife, Justice G Rajasuriya said, “by no stretch of imagination, a wife’s disinclination to cook could be a ground for divorce”.

The engineer, who got married in 1999, said that his wife refused to cook as she feared handling knives and it amounted to physical and mental cruelty, a ground for divorce. The judge said that though there was no harm if a husband expected his wife to cook food, it could not not be reason for granting divorce on the ground of physical or mental cruelty.

A principal sub-judge in Nagercoil had granted him divorce in 2004 but a district judge reversed the order in 2006 on a petition by the woman expressing her wish to live with him. The engineer filed the present appeal against this order.

Judge Rajasuriya said that it was crystal clear that the “temperament” of the husband towards the wife was not proper. “He started looking at his wife as though she had psychiatric problem and that she deliberately avoided cooking,” he said.