When I was hearing out Saikat about his wife’s adultery and how he had overcome the feeling of committing suicide or a crime, I remembered what one of my MRA friends has shared with me a few days ago –

I remembered how so many marriage martyrs die every day, without anyone noticing their death. Nowadays adultery is a growing ground for divorce, and recently NCW has demanded that adultery by either men or women should be a civil offence and NOT a criminal offence. NCW also suggested that a cheating wife is a victim and not an offender. Already IPC 497 says, the wife will not be punished for adultery and only a man can be punished. NCW has gone one step ahead in granting alimony to adulterous wives as well.

With a little bit of study, Saikat came to know about all the facts and was praying to God that his infidel wife agrees to the divorce and goes away from his life. But that never happened. He travelled to many temples and prayed the same to various gods, but still, that did not happen.

In 2009, to his surprise Saikat found his cheating wife to be pregnant. Even though they were not in any physical relationship for years, this was a great shocker for him. He did everything to find out the exact date when the ‘act’ could have happened but didn’t remember anything. He started thinking that it was all his misunderstanding and unnecessary doubt on his wife’s fidelity, but then in one evening in April 2011, he suddenly got his wife’s email password.

That was like a hidden treasure for him. As he browsed through her emails from his office laptop after getting her password by accident, he found how secretly his wife was cheating on him. How many different ways she had adopted and how every day those shining blinking eyes had cheated him, how those lips told him continuous lies and how that sick mind was conspiring against him. The reason he was not killed or thrown away by the wife or her paramour was that she needed him for her child’s growth and future and after that was secured she had planned to kick him out in his old age.

He thought those emails were a clear indication of the paternity fraud and their relation was good enough proof for him to get a peaceful divorce and hence for the first time in his life, he tried searching for NGOs that could help him out. He found out and contacted them.

But to his dismay his friends and criminal lawyers suggested him to get a DNA test of the child done to get a confirmation on the child’s paternity. Because claiming wife to be adulterous is the biggest crime in India. The wife, however, can easily do that. Another crime is challenging a child’s paternity. Because paternity and legitimacy of a child are very sensitive issues in the eyes of law, and NO court in India can give an order for a DNA test to prove child’s legitimacy unless it is in favour of the child.

In recent times, in 2012 the famous N D Tiwary paternity case was also in favour of the child and hence Tiwari was forced by the court to give his blood sample for a DNA test. This was because the child has challenged Tiwari that he was the father and he had to approve that, while Tiwari was denying the same.

However, in this case, as Saikat wanted to challenge the paternity it was not in his favour, as this had also put the chastity of his wife in question, apart from questioning the child’s legal lineage. The DNA test report that he had done from a private lab in Delhi where they lived, could only act as prima facie evidence for him to file his cases. He wanted to file a divorce immediately and get rid of his cheating wife quickly. But his friends and many other lawyers were suggesting against filing any cases, including divorce on the ground of adultery and cruelty.

On the other hand, he was desperate to get rid of his adulterous wife as soon as possible, before it was too late for him. But what to do when the adulterous parasite wife does not want to leave you?

[ See what to do when your adulterous wife does not want to leave you