Divorce granted by a foreign court is invalid -Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that divorces granted by foreign courts in a dispute between Indian couples are invalid. It said that divorces granted on the grounds of irretrievable breakdown of marriage are not legal. A bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and Srichandrasekhar said that such a judgment cannot be implemented in the country. It said that even if the husband acquires foreign citizenship and marries a second time there, the case registered here will continue. A man got married on April 18, 2003 in Sattenapalli. He went to the United Kingdom in 2007 for higher studies, and she left after that. She did not return to her husband after returning to her native place for childbirth. He filed a petition for divorce in the Narasaraopet court due to the breakdown of the marriage bond, but it was rejected.

Later, he filed an appeal in the High Court and withdrew it. On February 1, 2013, he obtained British citizenship and applied for divorce at the Cambridge County Court on the basis of that. The court granted the divorce in 2014, stating that the marriage had irretrievably broken down. He later married a second time in Norfolk. Objecting to this, his first wife filed a complaint against him at the Narsaraopet Town Police Station two years later. When he approached the Supreme Court seeking to have the case dismissed, the bench made it clear that it should be continued. However, the criminal cases filed against his second wife and his parents were dismissed.