Delhi High Court said- Refusing to give the affection of a child to the other spouse is cruelty

The calculated act of a spouse of denying the child’s affection to the other parent amounts to mental cruelty, the Delhi High Court has said while upholding the divorce of an estranged couple. The court dismissed an appeal by the wife against a 2018 family court order granting divorce and observed that in the instant case, the daughter was “totally alienated” and used as a weapon against the husband, an army officer. “The learned Principal Judge, Family Courts has, therefore, rightly concluded that such child alienation is an extreme act of mental cruelty towards a father who has never shown any neglect for the child,” said a bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Neena Bansal Krishna in a recent order. The court said discord and the disputes were between the couple, who got married in 1996 as per Hindu customs and rites, and no matter how bitter the relationship was, it was not appropriate to involve the child or embitter her against the father or to use her as a tool against him. “Any act of any parent calculated to deny such affection to the other parent, amounts to alienating the child which amounts to mental cruelty…Nothing more can be more painful than experiencing one’s own flesh and blood i.e., the child, rejecting him or her. Such wilful alienation of the child amounts to mental cruelty,” the court said. The court also rejected the appellant wife’s objections with respect to daily consumption of alcohol by the husband, saying “merely because a person consumes alcohol daily, it does not make him an alcoholic or add up to a bad character” when there was no untoward incident.