Woman wins Rs1.5m defamation lawsuit against ex-husband

Abida was falsely called mentally ill, divorced by Amin 31 years ago.

KARACHI: A woman, who was divorced 31 years ago on false allegations of being mentally challenged, won Rs1.5 million in a defamation lawsuit against her ex-husband and the doctor who issued a fabricated medical certificate.

A two-judge bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) ordered on Wednesday her ex-husband to pay Rs1.5 million in damages, as already ordered by the single bench, with a mark-up to date. Headed by Justice Irfan Saadat Khan, the division bench announced its verdict that was reserved on April 22, following lengthy proceedings initiated in 1985.

The proceedings originated from a civil suit instituted by Abida, who approached the SHC with a claim for Rs1.5 million in damages from her ex-husband for defaming her by divorcing her with allegations of being mentally challenged.

However, in November 1998, Amin and the doctor filed an appeal that challenged the SHC single bench order that had decreed the defamation against them. In their appeal, the appellants had pleaded the court modify the amount of Rs1.5 million that the single bench had ordered to be paid to Abida.

Amin divorced Abida on the basis of a fake medical certificate on September 22, 1985, Abida was the Sindh Small Industries Corporation assistant-director, informed Abida’s lawyer. In the divorce deed, Amin had blamed his wife for not telling him about a gynaecological disease she was suffering from prior to the solemnisation of their marriage. Abida had urinary tract infection (UTI) of a serious nature that Amin only found out when a family doctor treated Abida following a bad health condition. The doctor certified that Abida was treated for UTI and some serious gynaecological disease in a medical certificate, dated August 2, 1985. “Her UTI led to chronic renal failure. She had got many mental symptoms of hallucination and psychosis,” said the doctor.

The lawyers representing Abida told the judges that Abida, an only child, was raised by a single-mother with great difficulty. “She [Abida] had started working from a very young age and supported her mother when she [her mother] fell sick,” said the lawyer

Abida came from a conservative Kutchi Memon community and married the appellant on July 4, 1984, after his first wife died, said the lawyers.

The single bench came to the conclusion that Amin had defamed Abida, maintained lawyers Farrukh Usman and Amir Maqsood. Amin made Abida’s life miserable as nobody will now marry her and she is leading a lonely life after being defamed, they added.

If the appellant was not having a child with Abida, he could have divorced her in simple and plain terms, but since he was bent upon making her life miserable, he leveled false allegations,  the lawyers claimed, adding that Amin managed to get a fabricated medical certificate that under no circumstances can be presumed as a ‘privileged document’.

The division bench noted that Amin had denied that his ex-wife suffered from UTI in his written statement, adding that such assertion by the appellant is contrary to the submission by him in his written statement before the family court. The bench questioned the accuracy behind the two statements.

Abida had visited the family doctor only two or three times with complains of UTI, making it questionable as to how the doctor could then mention mental symptoms of hallucination and psychosis, observed the judges during a cross-examination in court.

“This implies that the certificate issued by the doctor was tainted with malice and appears to be fictitious, fake, concocted or issued on the instructions of appellant-1 [Amin],” said one of the judges.

Dismissing the appeal, the two judges ordered to not only maintain the single bench’s order of paying Rs1.5 million in damages to Abida but the appellants were further ordered to also pay the mark-up on the principal amount.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 28^th, 2016.