On the 3rd of September, 2019, a division bench of the Gauhati High Court decided whether an unsubstantiated (as opposed to unproven) allegation of homosexuality by one of the spouses against the other in a divorce case amounts to cruelty. Summarily, the court answered this question in the affirmative. This is the first recorded instance in which an Indian court has taken a stance on a homosexuality allegation in a divorce case. Though these allegations are raised in divorce cases from time to time, they are always ignored at the argumentation staged, and have never been attended to by the judges in their judgment. In this blog, I will summarize the facts of the case very briefly and discuss the circumstances under which the homosexuality allegation was raised and decided by the court.

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