Gauhati high court grants divorce on Hindu wife’s refusal to wear sindoor

nNEWDELHI: The refusal to wear the sakha and sindoor by a woman married according to Hindu rituals and customs signifies her refusal to stay married to her husband, the Gauhati high court has said while granting a husband’s plea for divorce.

Sakha is a bangle made of conch shells that is worn by newlywed women, while sindoor is vermillion that some Hindu married women apply on their heads.

A categorical refusal by the wife to wear sakha and sindoor points towards her unwillingness to continue her married life, a bench of chief justice Ajai Lamba and justice Soumitra Saikia ruled.

A family court had in December 2018 rejected husband’s plea for divorce on these grounds. But the high court observed that the husband alleged before the lower court that the wife refused to wear sakha and sindoor, a contention the wife did not dispute. The couple was married in February 2012.

According to the plea filed by the husband, after a month of living together in the husband’s house with his relatives, the wife raised the demand to live with the husband separately, following which the relationship deteriorated. The woman left the matrimonial home in 2013 and filed a case against her husband and his family for cruelty and dowry harassment. They were acquitted, and the husband filed a suit for divorce on grounds of “cruelty” by the wife.