The Supreme Court while hearing a case has recently said that a woman is not a chattel to be forced to live with her husband.

The SC made the observation on Tuesday while hearing a plea by a man who filed a petition seeking an order to make his partner live with him again.

“What do you think? Is a woman a chattel that we can pass such an order? Is a wife a chattel that she can be directed to go with you?” asked the SC bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Hemant Gupta while hearing the man’s petition.

The petitioner, a resident of Gorakhpur had approached the SC to get his conjugal rights restored as per a Family Court order.

The couple had married in 2013 and after allegedly suffering torture and harassment at her in-laws’ house, the wife left her matrimonial home.
In 2015, she approached the Gorakhpur Family court seeking Rs 20,000 as montly maintenance from her husband.

The husband also filed a plea to get his conjugal rights restored.
After both the pleas were accepted by the court, the husband argued that he had no obligation to pay the maintenance as the wife is refusing to live with him.

The argument was however rejected by the Allahabad High Court, following which he approached the SC.

The SC on Tuesday rejected the plea and said that he was asking the court to pass an order as if she can be sent to a place where she does not want to go, like a chattel.
The bench declined the husband’s request for enforcement of conjugal rights, reminding him that his appeal before the top court was arising from dismissal of his petition by the Allahabad high court against the order to pay maintenance.