Pallavi (name changed), 28, a newly-wed IT professional, has approached the family court seeking divorce from her 31-year-old businessman husband Gaurav (name changed), for not updating his Facebook profile status from “single” to “married”!
The Telugu couple had an arranged marriage just two months ago. The case was filed in the jurisdiction of an Aurangabad court where the girl resides. Gaurav told the court that he had forgotten to update his status. However, Pallavi said she couldn’t trust her husband and wanted to nullify the marriage. The judge has given the two parties six months to undergo counselling.
There are several cases like this one of couples wasting the time of the courts by asking for marriages to be invalidated for the flimsiest of reasons. Altercations over who makes the tea and refusal to take an in-law’s phone call have snow-balled into divorces. Family court lawyer Anita Salabh Jain says couples are not serious about a long-term relationship. “They just want to make insignificant issues culminate into something serious and drag the spouse to court. The sole issue of not changing one’s marital status in social networking sites can’t be accepted as a ground for divorce. The court will try to bring the parties together,” she said.
High Court advocate P. Subhash said, “I came to know of the above incident from the magistrate in the Aurangabad court. The Hyderabadi husband had told the judge that he was so busy post marriage with family and his furniture business that he really had no time to check his FB or change his status. He was willing to do so now or even de-activate his account. However, the woman was not keen to continue with the marriage though it was consummated. She says her husband might be doing things behind her back and she couldn’t trust him. There’s no proof of any extramarital affair.”