India’s supreme court has granted a divorce to a man on the grounds of “cruelty” after his wife refused to share a home with her in-laws, effectively ruling that a married woman must live with her husband’s family.

Justice Anil R Dave, one of the the most senior judges in India, said the wife’s desire to leave her in-laws’ home was inspired by “western thought” and violated traditional values of Indian Hindus.

“In normal circumstances, a wife is expected to be with the family of the husband after the marriage,” stated the supreme court ruling, which also dismissed the wife’s attempt to kill herself as a plot to “torture” her husband and his relatives.

There is no legal obligation for men to live with their parents, so the ruling still allows couples to live independently if men choose to set up a separate home. But the case had been seen as a test, pitting the rights of women against traditional Hindu values.

Activists said the ruling left millions of women who were in unhappy marriages or with abusive husbands even more vulnerable.

“If you look at the language the court has used, it’s very regressive,” said Tenzing Chusang, from the Women’s Rights Initiative, a lawyers’ collective. “If you make the grounds of divorce very lenient for men, it makes the woman very vulnerable.”

Divorce in India carries a huge stigma: there are few financial provisions for divorced women, and little legal support.

Chusang said: “In India there’s no such thing as shared matrimonial property or equal division of assets. All she gets if the husband divorces her, and that too after years of litigation, is a minimal maintenance payment. What can she do? She has to stay.”

The judge said the wife’s claims that her husband was having an affair were fabricated, and that her suicide attempt was a devious attempt to manipulate her husband’s family.

He focused on the “tremendous stress” the husband might have faced if she had succeeded in killing herself. “One can imagine how a poor husband would get entangled into the clutches of law [after a suicide], which would virtually ruin his sanity, peace of mind, career and probably his entire life,” the judgment said.



It said a suicide attempt alone was grounds for ending a marriage. “In our opinion, only this one event was sufficient for the appellant husband to get a decree of divorce on the ground of cruelty,” it said.

The case, which has been moving through the glacially slow Indian justice system for more than two decades, was brought by a man from the southern Indian state of Karnataka. He wanted to divorce his wife after she insisted on leaving her in-laws’ home, but had been denied a divorce by the high court.

In India, women are expected to move in with the relatives of their husbands, follow the rules and customs of their home, and ideally, blend in seamlessly as a new daughter.



But in reality forced or quickly arranged marriages mean many young women marry into a life of near slavery, being responsible for all household chores and expected to obey their in-laws’ every demand. Often, they are barred from taking paid work, and have little control of the family purse. In rural areas, many women are prohibited from wearing western clothing, meeting friends after dark or leaving the house.

Some women have been pushing back against these restrictions, as the wife in this case tried to do. But the judge ruled that the “pious obligation” of Hindu men to look after their parents took precedence over her wishes.

“It is not a common practice or desirable culture for a Hindu son in India to get separated from his parents on getting married at the instance of the wife, especially when the son is the only earning member in the family,” the ruling said.

It is the latest blow for women’s rights in a country where sexual violence and trafficking is common, marital rape is not a crime, and discrimination is endemic.

In a 2012 poll of gender specialists around the world, India was voted the worst G20 country in which to be a woman. It was ranked worse than Saudi Arabia, where women can’t legally drive and were only allowed to vote for the first time in 2015.



The ruling also risks entrenching a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio, by endorsing parental preference for sons, who are seen as being more likely to support their parents in old age. The 2011 census found that for every 1,000 boys, there were only 918 girls. Sex-selective abortion was believed to account for much of the gap.

“The court is emphasising that it’s the son’s duty to look after his parents,” said Chusang. “So basically it’s saying that [a daughter] is not really part of the family. She’s going to leave, she’s never going to look after her parents in old age, and therefore she has no value.”

• In India, suicide hotlines can be found here. In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found here