Ann Saurabh Dutt v. Lieutenant Colonel Saurabh Iqbal Bahadur Dutt
Background
A wife, a qualified dentist, sought to build her own professional practice in Ahmedabad rather than relocate to a remote location dictated by her husband's Army posting; she also prioritised a stable environment for raising her child. The Family Court, affirmed by the High Court, had treated her pursuit of her career and her decisions around the child's upbringing as "cruelty" and "desertion" of her husband, while granting a divorce decree. She appealed to the Supreme Court challenging only these adverse findings of cruelty and desertion (not the divorce itself), and in a connected matter, the husband separately petitioned the Supreme Court seeking her prosecution for perjury under Sections 195/340 CrPC.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court strongly criticised the reasoning of the courts below as resting on "archaic," "ultra-conservative," and patriarchal assumptions that a wife's career and autonomy must yield to her husband's professional and geographical demands, holding that a professionally qualified woman's pursuit of her career and her choices for her child's welfare cannot be branded as cruelty or desertion. Finding no credible evidence to support the cruelty allegations (including an unsubstantiated claim about forced religious conversion), the Court expunged and set aside the specific findings of cruelty and desertion recorded against the wife. However, since both parties confirmed there was no prospect of reconciliation and the husband had already remarried, the Court did not disturb the divorce decree itself, converting its basis to "irretrievable breakdown of marriage" instead, so the appeal was only partly allowed. In the connected petition, the Court dismissed the husband's plea for the wife's prosecution for perjury, finding the allegations were driven by personal vendetta rather than any genuine case of false evidence.
Lesson Learnt
A woman's pursuit of her professional career or decisions made for her child's welfare cannot lawfully be treated as marital cruelty or desertion merely because they conflict with a spouse's expectations: marriage does not require a wife to subordinate her individual identity and aspirations to her husband's choices.