Man forced to live in bus stop for days by wife gets divorce

Court relief is finally in for a 50-year-old man who had to spend days on the terrace of his building, bus stops and guest houses as his wife denied him entry to the flat he himself had bought.

The wife, a 51-year-old doctor, always held that her husband was having an affair with a Chinese woman.

"Throwing husband out of the house and then disallowing him to come back into his self-acquired flat by using police machinery can be said to be nothing short of cruelty to husband by wife," the family court concluded while granting him divorce.

The couple got married in 1986, but a few years after marriage, differences cropped up between them. They have a 24-year-old son and are residents of Mulund.

The man filed for a divorce petition in 2011. According to the petition, around 1 pm on July 10, 2009, he was informed by his son that the police was at the door looking for him.

The police asked him to accompany them as his wife had filed a complaint against him. At the police station, he was made to sit for hours, and then he was asked to proceed to another station.

Harassed by the police on the basis of his wife's allegations and upon being denied entry into his house, he spent as many as 10 days on a bus stop, braving torrential rains.

In the 37-page judgment, principal judge Dr Laxmi Rao held that all these were sufficient grounds that amount to cruelty.

"Around 4.30 pm, the wife reached the police station and started yelling at the police sub inspector (PSI) to throw him out of the house. She was uncontrollable and threatened to proceed against the police if they did not support her," the man alleged in his petition.

The PSI then threatened to arrest him, if he did not leave the house within two hours. "Caught in a helpless situation, he was compelled to leave the house with just some of his certificates. He suffered great humiliation besides loss of shelter," the order copy said.

The police then advised the man to return to his house and wait outside till his wife changed her mind. The man spent hours sitting in the garden of the building. His son also sat with him waiting for his mother.

At 11.30 pm, his wife returned and allowed their son to enter the house, but refused entry to her husband. The man then requested his son to give him a pillow and blanket. He spent the entire night on the terrace of the building in the torrential rain.

Since the wife refused to relent, the man approached the police the next day and sought permission to take his belongings from the house. After spending 10 days waiting at bus stops and guest houses, he took a house on rent and stayed there for a year.

It's after all this that he approached the court. In its judgement, the court observed: "His attempts for an amicable settlement of matrimony have been thwarted by the respondent (wife). She has treated him with utmost cruelty."