Long period of separation without any hope for reconciliation amounts to cruelty to both the parties, the Court observed.
Observing that courts ought not to sustain a marriage that exists only in form, the Supreme Court on Monday (December 15) dissolved the marriage of a couple who had been living separately for over 24 years. The Court held that the parties’ fundamentally incompatible perceptions of marital life, coupled with their prolonged refusal or inability to reconcile, amounted to mutual cruelty and led to an irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.
Relying on precedents including Rakesh Raman v. Kavita (2023), the Court reiterated that a prolonged period of separation with no reasonable possibility of reconciliation constitutes cruelty to both spouses.
The Court observed that the prolonged pendency of matrimonial litigation often reduces a marriage to a mere legal fiction. It noted that where such disputes have remained unresolved for an extended period, dissolution of the marital bond better serves the interests of both the parties as well as society. Holding that no useful purpose would be served by allowing such proceedings to continue without granting effective relief, the Bench comprising Justices Manmohan and Joymalya Bagchi allowed the husband’s appeal and restored 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 lived separately since then—almost 24 years—without any children being born from the wedlock.
The husband initially approached the court in 2003 seeking dissolution of the marriage; however, the petition was dismissed as premature. He thereafter filed a second divorce petition in 2007, which was allowed by the Trial Court on the ground of desertion. In 2011, the Gauhati High Court overturned the decree, holding that the wife had justifiable reasons for leaving the matrimonial home and that the husband could not be permitted to benefit from his own wrongdoing. Aggrieved by the High Court’s decision, the husband preferred an appeal before the Supreme Court.
Setting aside the High Court’s judgment, Justice Manmohan, speaking for the Court, held that the High Court had erred in undertaking an attribution of fault between the parties. The Court observed that where spouses have lived separately for nearly 24 years and no children have been born of the marriage, considerations of fault recede into insignificance. It further held that such a prolonged separation, in itself, amounts to mutual cruelty, justifying the exercise of the Court’s plenary 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 placed reliance on the Constitution Bench decision in Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan (2023), which clarified that the Court’s authority under Article 142 to do “complete justice” is not constrained by the fault-based framework of statutory divorce law.
The Court also drew support from Kumari Rekha v. Shambhu Saran Paswan (2025), wherein it was observed that the absence of specific statutory grounds for dissolution of a Hindu marriage does not preclude the exercise of this Court’s powers under Article 142, particularly in cases involving an irretrievable breakdown of marriage.