Denying sex to a husband for a long time without any justification amounts to "mental cruelty" and is grounds for divorce, the Delhi High Court ruled on Wednesday. The judgment came after a hearing on a man's appeal, alleging that his wife had refused to have physical relations with him for four and a half years despite her not having any physical disability.

While granting a decree of divorce, the two-judge bench comprising justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Pratibha Rani noted that the man's wife had not denied the allegation when the case was heard by a trial court. "...The husband has fully established that he was subjected to mental cruelty by the wife denying sex to him," the bench said. It added that its judgment had referred to the legal position that the "denial of sex to a spouse itself amounts to causing mental cruelty".

In March, a trial court had dismissed the husband's divorce petition, saying that the instances he had cited did not meet the standards of cruelty set by the provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. The man had also claimed that he and his family were subjected to mental cruelty because his wife did not do any household chores.