Grounds for dissolution of marriage :

(1) Any marriage before or after the commencement of this Act, may, on petition presented to the court either by the husband or the wife, be dissolved and a divorce decree be granted on the following grounds : (i) the respondent has committed adultery; or (ii) due to irreconciliable incompatibility; or (iii) the respondent has treated the petitioner with such cruelty as to cause a reasonable apprehension in the mind of the petitioner that it would be harmful or injurious for the petitioner to live with the respondent; (iv) the respondent has been incurably of unsound mind for a continuous period of not less than three years immediately preceeding the presentation of the petition; (v) the respondent has, for a period of not less than three years immediately preceeding the representation of the petition, been suffering from a virulent and incurable form of leprosy or any disease in a communicable form which endangers the life of the spouse; (vi) the respondent has not been heard of as being alive for a period of seven years or more by those persons who would have naturally have heard of the respondent if the respondent had been alive; (vii) the wife refuse to go on ‘Lawi’; (viii) the respondent has wilfully refused to consummate the marriage and the marriage has thereof not been consummated; (ix) the respondent has deserted the petitioner for at least two years immediately preceeding the presentation of the petition; (x) by mutual consent; (2) A wife or husband may also present a petition for the dissolution of their marriage on the ground that the spouse has, since the solemnization of the marriage been found guilty of rape, sodomy or bestiality.