Best Morning v. Nirmalendu, 2 June 1987.
The parties were a husband and wife, married according to Christian rites, who separated after the husband told the wife that there was no possibility of their having children because he had undergone a vasectomy prior to the marriage. The wife sought a declaration, unopposed by the husband, that the marriage was null and void on the grounds that the husband was impotent and that he had deceived her into marrying him. Although the Court found that under the Indian Divorce Act, 1869, the husband was not impotent, but rather sterile, it nonetheless upheld a lower court order dissolving the marriage under the Act on the ground of fraud. In its decision it pointed out that impotence meant the inability to perform the sexual act, not inability to procreate.
D001208:Asia; D003906:Developing Countries; D004243:Divorce; D005193:Family Planning Services; D007194:India; D007246:Infertility; D007603:Jurisprudence; D008393:Marriage; D012098:Reproduction; D013245:Sterilization, Reproductive; D014659:Vasectomy
Asia; Court Decision; Developing Countries; Divorce--legal aspects; Family Planning; India; Infertility--legal aspects; Male Sterilization; Nuptiality; Reproduction; Southern Asia; Sterilization, Sexual; Vasectomy--legal aspects