An Indian woman recently filed for divorce from her husband of only 40 days, claiming that he only bathed once or twice per month.
The unnamed woman from Agra, in India’s Uttar Pradesh state, approached the local family counseling center to complain about her husband’s poor personal hygiene, claiming that he rarely ever bathed, wore dirty clothes, and suffered from bad breath. She could barely stand close to the man, let alone be intimate with him. As a result, after only 40 days of marriage, the woman asked for a divorce. When questioned by the counseling center, the husband, Rajash, admitted to bathing only once or twice a month and cleansing by sprinkling his body with Gangajal (holy water from the river Ganges) once a week.
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One of the counselors at the family center in Agra told reporters that the young couple started getting into heated arguments about the husband’s hygiene a few weeks after the wedding. Eventually, the wife left the conjugal home and went back to living with her family. Shortly after, her family lodged a dowry harassment complaint at a local police station and requested a divorce.
The scorned wife said that Rajash had bathed 6 times in the last 40 days, a bit more than he usually did, but only because she insisted. Hearing about her decision to divorce him, the husband promised to improve his hygiene and even bathe on a daily basis, but the woman’s family said that she was unwilling to reconcile with him.
As bizarre as this sounds, this is far from the first time that a spouse’s poor hygiene has led to a divorce. A Taiwanese man once divorced his wife because she only bathed once a year, and another Indian man filed for divorce from his wife because she only bathed once every ten days.