New Delhi: A court has dismissed a woman’s suit seeking Rs 50 lakh in damages from her husband’s alleged extramarital partner, whom she accused of “stealing” his affection and destroying their marriage.District judge Atul Ahlawat said the wife failed to establish that the partner had induced, encouraged or intentionally caused the woman’s husband to withdraw from their marriage.The court said: “Merely because two consenting adults had entered into a consensual sexual relationship outside the marriage and it had led to the birth of a child, does not in itself establish the requirements with respect to… the alienation of affection.”The couple got married in 2001. The husband filed for divorce in 2012, which is pending adjudication. The husband developed an extramarital relationship with a woman after a US trip in 2009 and left the matrimonial home in Jan 2013. The petitioner alleged that her husband and the extramarital partner contracted a bigamous marriage in 2015 and had a daughter in Sept 2016.The wife, who initially sought Rs 1 crore with interest, later reduced her claim to Rs 50 lakh, under an Alienation of Affection claim, which seeks compensation from a third party who intentionally interferes in a marriage and causes one spouse to lose the other’s affection and companionship.However, the court held an affair alone was insufficient, and the wife had to establish that genuine love and affection existed between the spouses before the alleged interference, that it was destroyed, and that the third party’s wrongful conduct directly caused its destruction.The wife’s argument collapsed during cross-examination when she admitted to instances of physical, emotional and mental abuse and said her husband had denied her physical intimacy for most of their marriage. The court also found no direct evidence that the extramarital partner had induced the husband to leave. Rather, it noted the husband’s free choice of persuing the relationship outside marriage.Dismissing the suit, the court said: “There was no corresponding duty upon her (the extramarital partner) to thwart any advances made by defendant no. 2 (the husband), since the corresponding duty of conjugal relationship rested only on the defendant no. 2 and defendant no. 1 cannot be saddled with such an obligation under the law.”
