JUDGMENT

Devan Ramachandran, J.—The concept of ‘cruelty’ has scarcely been defined with exactitude in any matrimonial or divorce statutes; and perhaps, it can never be.

2. As a normal standard, any violent or demoralizing act, constituting abuse, either physically or mentally, on either of the spouses in a matrimonial scenario, would generally be construed to be cruelty.

3. The U.N. Special Report of the year 1955 defines ‘cruelty’ as “any act of gender based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”

4. Lord Davey of the House of Lords, spoke thus for a Bench, with a narrow majority of five to four thus:

“The general idea, which, I think underlies all those decisions, is that, while declining to lay down any hard and fast definition of legal cruelty, the Courts acted on the principle of giving protection to the complaining spouse against the actual or apprehended violence, physical ill-treatment, or injury to health”.

5. There are several elements that Courts will have to consider: d