In rare instance, Pune court grants divorce to couple within 14 days of filing petition

The court waived the mandatory cooling-off period of six months as the couple had been living separately since 2019

In its order, the court said there was no dispute between the couple regarding claim of maintenance, property or dowry. (Representational)

In a rare instance, a family court in Pune has granted divorce by mutual consent to a couple within 14 days of filing the petition by waiving the mandatory six-month cooling-off period.

In her ruling, the judge M R Kale said, “Considering the facts and circumstances and the evidence on record, it is evident that due to difference of opinion and incompatibility of their temperament, they cannot live together and there cannot be a happy married life between the two petitioners. Hence, they are entitled to a decree of divorce by mutual consent.”

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“The marriage counsellor has filed a report which states there was no possibility of a reconciliation between the two,” the order on September 29 added.

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The petition was filed by the couple through lawyers Mayur Salunke and Ajinkya Salunke last month. The couple had married on December 12, 2017 under the Special Marriage Act. “Section 28 of the Special Marriage Act lays down the norms regarding the six-month cooling-off period. The court waived the cooling-off period as the couple had already been living separately for more than a year,” said advocate Ajinka.

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The couple studied at the same college in Pune and are software engineers. The husband works in Dubai while the woman works in Pune. “Soon after their marriage, they started having differences of opinion and constantly quarrelled even over petty things. They started living separately on April 26, 2019,” the advocate said.

In its order, the court said there was no dispute between the couple regarding claim of maintenance, property or dowry. “The woman had waived off her right to maintenance and both the couple will not have any claim on each other’s property,” the order said.

Advocate Ajinkya said the parties had no relationship of husband and wife between them. “The couple had settled matters relating to alimony, maintenance and stridhan as well as other issues relating to movable and immovable property. These conditions were enumerated in Amardeep versus Harveen Kaur case,” he said. As they had no children, there was no question of fighting for custody either, he added.

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“The apex court had in its ruling clearly stated a marriage can be annulled if the couple had been living separately for more than a year. The norm relating to the cooling-off period had been brought in to explore whether the differences between the quarrelling couple can be resolved. And, therefore, the couple are sent for counselling. The SC had said that if there was no chance of reconciliation, the cooling-off period can be waived,” the advocate highlighted.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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