The Bombay High Court
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Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has declared that a wife's allegations of impotency against her husband during divorce proceedings do not constitute defamation and that such claims, when made to protect a woman's interests, are a necessary part of the legal process.
Dismissing a man's defamation complaint against his estranged wife and her family, Justice S M Modak in his July 17 order, made public on Friday, noted that under the Hindu Marriage Act, allegations of impotency are "very much relevant" and can be a legitimate ground for divorce.
Justice Modak stated that a wife is "justified in making those allegations to support her interest" and to prove that she suffered cruelty in the marriage.
The man had argued that his wife's claims, made in her divorce and maintenance pleas and in a separate FIR, had become part of the public record and therefore damaged his reputation.
The allegations of impotency being a ground for divorce are necessary, it said.
"This court feels that when litigation between spouses arises in a matrimonial relationship, then the wife is justified in making those allegations to support her interest," the court said, adding the same cannot be held as defamatory.
The man had stated that his estranged wife had, in her pleas seeking divorce and maintenance and also in her FIR against him and his parents, claimed that he was impotent. These documents were part of the public record and hence defamatory.
The woman, her father and brother had moved the high court seeking to quash a sessions court order, directing a magistrate's court to conduct an inquiry into the man's defamation complaint.
The woman, in her plea to the high court, said that her husband's impotence was one of the grounds for dissolving the marriage.