@Rekha Somasundaram,
You have no need at all to get your divorce decree ratified in India. Your earlier marriage was dissolved by divorce decree for all purposes and intents. You can go ahead with your next marriage without a hitch and you will never face any problem due to the foreign divorce decree. My above opinion is on the following grounds:
1. You both submitted to the jurisdiction of Malaysian Court.
2. The ground of divorce was mutual consent, which is a valid ground under Hindu Marriage Act as well as Special Marriage Act.
3. Neither you nor your husband can question the validity of the divorce decree as you both appeared before the competent Court in Malaysia. The court which granted the divorce decree is a competent court. You both are also barred to question whether the court that granted divorce is competent or not, at a later stage with malafide intentions, as you both submitted yourselves.
4. If your ex-husband or you, in the next marriage registration time to the application attach the divorce decree, then your would be spouses knowing fully well about the divorce decree passed by the Malaysian Court, cannot file any case of bigamy against you or your husband. No other party has got locus standi(competent to file a case) on this point.
Now let us see the Section 13 and 14 of C.P.C., which refer about the foreign decrees. Bare reading of those sections will dispel the nagging doubt in your mind as well as other readers facing the similar situation.
13. When foreign judgment not conclusive.
A foreign judgment shall be conclusive as to any matter thereby directly adjudicated upon between the same parties or between parties under whom they or any of them claim litigating under the same title except-
(a) where it has not been pronounced by a Court of competent jurisdiction;
(b) where it has not been given on the merits of the case;
(c) where it appears on the face of the proceedings to be founded on an incorrect view of international law or a refusal to recognise the law of
1[India] in cases in which such law is applicable;
(d) where the proceedings in which the judgment was obtained are opposed to natural justice;
(e) where it has been obtained by fraud;
(f) where it sustains a claim founded on a breach of any law in force in 1[India].
1. Subs. by Act 2 of 1951, sec. 3, for “the States” (w.e.f. 1-4-1951)
14. Presumption as to foreign judgments.
The Court shall presume upon the production of any document purporting to be a certified copy of a foreign judgment that such judgment was pronounced by a Court of competent jurisdiction, unless the contrary appears on the record; but such presumption may be displaced by proving want of jurisdiction.
You can see that the divorce decree obtained by you meet all the contingencies put in Section 13 (a) to (f) and hence it is valid. Go through the Section 14 above, there is a presumption of validity of the foreign decree.
And finally, in most of the foreign divorce decree cases, it will not be possible for both the parties to present in Indian Courts and get a fresh divorce decree nor to get the earlier foreign divorce decree ratified. Further, in C.P.C., there is no provision to get the foreign decree ratified. In Indian courts, only such foreign divorce decrees have been challenged where one party aggrieved in respect of such foreign decree. If both the parties mutually consented and obtained the divorce decree by competent court, they have never been challenged in Indian courts and they can never be challenged.
