High Court Grants Divorce to Chef Kunal Kapur Citing Cruelty by Wife

High Court Grants Divorce to Chef Kunal Kapur Citing Cruelty by Wife: According to the Delhi High Court, Kunal Kapur is no longer living with her, wife's treatment of him was devoid of dignity and empathy, resulting in a divorce decree on Tuesday.

Suresh Kumar Kait and Neena Bansal Krishna, presiding over the case, noted that Kapur's wife's conduct towards him lacked dignity and empathy, bringing disgrace to the marriage.

The aforementioned facts of the present case lead us to find that the conduct of the respondent (wife) towards the appellant (husband) is devoid of dignity and empathy.

They had married in April 2008 and welcomed a son in 2012. They have been living separately since 2015. Known for his role as a judge on the television show "Master Chef," Kapur accused his wife of consistently disrespecting his parents and humiliating him.

According to the wife, Kapur fabricated stories to obtain a divorce and kept her in the dark about his intentions.

“In the light of the afore-noted facts of the present case, we find that conduct of the respondent towards appellant has been such that it is devoid of dignity and empathy towards him. When such is the nature of one spouse towards the other, it brings disgrace to the very essence of marriage, and there exists no possible reason as to why he should be compelled to live while enduring the agony of living together,” the bench said.

The bench opined that the respondent's wife had made “such wild allegations without any sound basis, solely with the intention of discrediting Kapur in the eyes of the court” to get a “favorable outcome”. “Such baseless arguments are detrimental to a person who is regularly in the public eye. Therefore, such behavior constitutes cruelty,” the bench ruled.

Appeals were allowed by the High Court against Kapur's 2018 divorce order under the Hindu Marriage Act, which denied him divorce. The bench further stated that it is a settled position of law that “making reckless, defamatory, humiliating, and unsubstantiated allegations in public against a spouse amounts to cruelty”.

Hence, the Family Court erred in rejecting Kapur's divorce petition under Section 13 (1) (ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.

According to the bench's order, marital discords are "inevitable" in marriage, but when they take the form of disrespect and insensitivity towards their spouse, "the marriage itself loses its sanctity”.

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