Prabhjot Kaur and Gurvinder Pratap Singh, both Indian international students in Canada, got married in a civil ceremony in February 2019 so that they could live together. But the girl says they didn’t consummate the marriage till they had a gurdwara wedding
The Canadian Bazaar
TORONTO: It is a first case of its kind for the Indo-Canadian community.
A Sikh girl student from India, who got married to a fellow Sikh student in a civil ceremony but decided not to have sex till they had a gurdwara ceremony, has got the marriage annulled by Vancouver’s Court of Appeal for British Columbia.
Prabhjot Kaur and Gurvinder Pratap Singh, who came to Canada as students from India, got married in a civil ceremony in February 2019. They started living together but didn’t sleep together as they wanted go through the gurdwara wedding ceremony.
But before they could undergo the gurdwara ceremony and then consummate their marriage, they developed differences and their marriage failed.
Prabhjot Kaur moved a lower court to annul her wedding on the grounds that the couple have not consummated it for religious reasons. But the lower court rejected her argument and refused to annul the wedding.
Prabhjot Kaur then moved the higher Court of Appeal for British Columbia.
The higher court annulled the wedding last week, saying that the law must be applied “in accordance with the cultural norms of the parties seeking annulment.”
During the court hearing, Prabhjot Kaur testified that she came to Canada as a student on December 18, 2017, and attended Selkirk College in Castlegar.
At her college, she said she met Gurvinder Pratap Singh who was also a student from India. They decided to marry, and did so in a civil ceremony conducted on February 6, 2019. But the couple decided to delay consummation of their marriage until a gurdwara wedding they planned to undergo later.
Prabhjot Kaur told the court that they married in a civil ceremony so they could live together, which otherwise would be contrary to their religion.
After the civil ceremony, they lived in the same house, but separately. They shared it with their friends. She lived with her friend, and he with his friend.
Then things between her and Gurvinder Pratap Singh got difficult.
She told the court, “And he was — like he was suffering from depression so we start to get to so many issues with each other, and because of those issues and [indiscernible/teleconference] we get into so many fights, so we just decided to stay away from each other…”
With her marriage still unconsummated, Prabhjot Kaur moved out of the house on May 25, 2019.
Asked why, Prabhjot Kaur testified, “Because our differences were so much and we were fighting so much that I decided to get out of that place because it was affecting my studies and my work also. So I just decided to get out of that thing because it was — was affecting my health and my emotional health so much.”
About Gurvinder Pratap Singh’s depression, she said that she first learned from him shortly after they married that he suffered from depression that, as he described it, was not too severe. But they were having so many issues.
When asked by the judge if there were any physical or psychological or psychiatric reasons for not consummating the marriage, she replied that there were not.
Nullifying the marriage, the Appeal Court said the couple’s “true aversion to consummation arose from their religious beliefs, creating a genuine incapacity.”
The husband didn’t oppose her application for the annulment of the wedding.
