India, Sept. 19 -- New Delhi

The Delhi High Court has ruled that persistent pressure to sever a spouse's ties with their family amounts to mental cruelty and can be a valid ground for divorce.

A bench of justices Anil Khsetarpal and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar delivered the verdict on Wednesday, while dealing with a woman's petition challenging a family court's January 2023 ruling, dissolving the marriage on the ground of cruelty.

The couple married in March 2007, had a son and separated in 2011. The husband, in 2016, filed for divorce on grounds of cruelty, claiming that his wife was unwilling to live in a joint family, pressured him to partition the family property, and insisted on living separately from his mother and sister.

He al...