Long period of separation without any hope for reconciliation amounts to cruelty to both the parties, the Court observed.
Observing that courts should not prolong a marriage that exists merely on paper, the Supreme Court on Monday (December 15) dissolved the marriage of a couple who had lived separately for over 24 years. The Court held that their fundamentally divergent approaches to marital life, coupled with a prolonged unwillingness to accommodate one another, constituted mutual cruelty and led to an irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.
Relying on precedents such as Rakesh Raman v. Kavita (2023), the Court observed that
“long period of separation without any hope for reconciliation amounts to cruelty to both the parties.”
“This Court is also of the view that pendency of matrimonial litigation for a long duration only leads to perpetuity of marriage on paper. It is in the best interest of parties and the society if ties are severed between parties in cases where litigation has been pending for a considerably long period of time. Consequently, this Court is of the opinion that no useful purpose shall be served by keeping the matrimonial litigation pending in Court without granting relief to the parties.”, observed a bench of Justices Manmohan and Joymlaya Bagchi, while allowing the husband’s plea and restoring the divorce decree passed by the trial court.
The marriage between the appellant-husband and the respondent-wife was solemnised in 2000. The parties separated in November 2001, within a year of the marriage, and have since lived apart for almost 24 years, without any children being born from the wedlock.
The husband first approached the court in 2003 seeking dissolution of the marriage, but the petition was dismissed as premature. A subsequent divorce petition filed in 2007 was allowed by the Trial Court on the ground of desertion. However, in 2011, the Gauhati High Court set aside the decree, holding that the wife had sufficient justification to leave the matrimonial home and that the husband was seeking to take advantage of his own wrong. Aggrieved, the husband appealed to the Supreme Court.
Setting aside the High Court’s decision, the judgment authored by Justice Manmohan held that the High Court erred in attributing fault between the parties. The Court observed that when the spouses had been living separately for nearly 24 years, with no children from the wedlock, determining fault became immaterial. It further held that such prolonged separation in itself amounts to mutual cruelty, justifying the exercise of the Court’s inherent powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to do complete justice by dissolving the marriage.
“In the case at hand, spouses have strongly held views with regard to the approach towards matrimonial life and they have refused to accommodate each other for a long period of time. Consequently, their conduct amounts to cruelty to each other. This Court is of the view that in matrimonial matters involving two individuals, it is not for the society or for the Court to sit in judgment over which spouses’ approach is correct or not. It is their strongly held views and their refusal to accommodate each other that amounts to cruelty to one another.”, the court said.
The Court referred to the Constitution Bench decision in Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan (2023), which held that the power of this Court under Article 142 to do “complete justice” is not constrained by the fault-based framework of statutory divorce law.
The Court also placed reliance on Kumari Rekha v. Shambhu Saran Paswan (2025), wherein it was observed that the absence of statutory grounds for dissolution of a Hindu marriage does not preclude this Court from exercising its powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, particularly where the marriage has irretrievably broken down.