POOJA SHARMA BAJAJ v. ABHEEPSA GUPTA & ANR.
When earlier suffering is used to find that there was no affection left to lose.
The wife described earlier abuse, emotional distance and denial of intimacy. The court relied on that history when finding that she had not proved the loving marriage required for an alienation-of-affection claim.
What the court decided
Pooja Sharma Bajaj sought ₹50 lakh in damages from Abheepsa Gupta. She alleged that Gupta had interfered in her marriage and alienated her husband’s affection. Her claim was based on “alienation of affection”—a civil claim alleging that a third person intentionally interfered with a marriage and caused one spouse to lose the other’s affection. The court dismissed the suit.
The court held that an alleged extramarital relationship was not enough, by itself, to make the other woman liable. This remained the position even though the husband and the other woman had a child while his first marriage continued. The wife also had to prove that the other woman had actively participated in, initiated or encouraged the loss of her husband’s affection.
The court further held that the wife had not produced sufficient evidence of a loving and affectionate marriage before the alleged interference. In reaching that conclusion, it relied in part on her testimony describing physical and emotional abuse, denial of intimacy and serious marital problems that had begun earlier.
Why the reasoning troubles us
A marriage can be troubled or abusive and still contain love, attachment, hope and attempts at repair. A wife may continue caring for the home, attending counselling and trying to preserve the marriage while being mistreated.
Treating her earlier suffering as proof that there was no affection left to lose creates a painful circle: the more harm she had already endured, the harder it became for the law to recognise a later loss.
The judgment used phrases such as “miserably failed” and “the last ounce of the steam” when rejecting her case. In our view, that language was unnecessarily harsh in a dispute involving allegations of abuse, abandonment and the loss of family life.
— Inking Souls