12 years apart, but court said no divorce—until Supreme Court stepped in

She left home while pregnant in 2010. He filed for divorce in 2019. The family court said no. The high court said no. Then the Supreme Court did something unusual.

On a Monday morning in August 2023, a bench of two judges in New Delhi looked at a marriage that had been dead for twelve years — the file on the desk felt thin for a decade of grievances — and asked a question the lower courts had refused to answer: what is the point of keeping two people legally bound when neither wants the other?

The answer came through a constitutional power so rarely used in family disputes that most lawyers spend their entire careers without seeing it invoked. The Supreme Court granted a divorce — not because the husband proved cruelty or desertion under the Hindu Marriage Act (the law that governs divorce for Hindus), but because the court decided the marriage had irretrievably broken down. It used Article 142 of the Constitution (the Supreme Court's power to pass any order necessary to do complete justice) to end it.

When the wife left while pregnant

The story begins in 2007 in Tripura, a small state in India's northeast. A man and a woman married. Within three years, the marriage collapsed.

The husband said his wife disrespected his parents and prioritised her job over household duties. The wife said something far more serious: cruelty, torture, and dowry demands. She insisted she would only return to the marriage if her husband moved to her hometown of Udaipur — a condition he refused.

In 2010, while pregnant, she left the matrimonial home and went to her parents' house. She never came back.

A daughter was born. The mother raised her alone. The father saw her, but the relationship between the parents was over. The daughter, now twelve, had never seen her parents in the same room.

Twelve years passed. The daughter turned twelve. The parents had not lived under the same roof for the child's entire life.

Three attempts to end the marriage

The husband tried every legal route available.

First, he filed a petition for restitution of conjugal rights (a court order asking the wife to return to the marriage). The Family Court in Agartala — a room with a creaking ceiling fan — dismissed it on August 29, 2013. The case was later transferred to the Family Court in Udaipur, where the wife lived. The husband withdrew his appeal before the High Court of Tripura.

Then, on March 8, 2019, he filed for divorce under Section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, on two grounds: cruelty (Section 13(1)(ia)) and desertion (Section 13(1)(ib)). The Family Court in West Tripura, Agartala, dismissed the petition. The court held that the husband had not proved cruelty or desertion, and that the marriage bond was not ruptured beyond repair.

The husband appealed to the High Court of Tripura at Agartala. On February 28, 2022, the High Court dismissed the appeal. Same reasoning: cruelty and desertion not established. The marriage could still be saved.

The husband then filed a Special Leave Petition (a request for the Supreme Court to hear an appeal) before the Supreme Court of India. The court converted it into Civil Appeal No. 5454 of 2023 and heard it.

The question the lower courts missed

Before the Supreme Court, the husband's lawyers did not re-argue the facts of cruelty and desertion. Instead, they made a different argument: look at the reality. This marriage has been dead for twelve years. There is no love, no trust, no possibility of reconciliation. Keeping it alive legally is cruelty in itself.

The wife's lawyers opposed the divorce. She had alleged cruelty and dowry demands. She wanted the marriage to continue — or at least, she did not want to be divorced without financial security for her daughter.

The bench — Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia — faced a dilemma. The lower courts had found, as a matter of fact, that the husband had not proved cruelty or desertion under the Hindu Marriage Act. On those grounds alone, the divorce could not be granted. But the marriage was clearly over. What could the court do?

Article 142: The court's hidden power

Article 142 of the Constitution gives the Supreme Court the power to pass any order necessary to do "complete justice" in any case before it. This power is extraordinary. It allows the court to go beyond the strict letter of the law when the law itself leads to injustice.

The Supreme Court has used Article 142 in death penalty cases, in environmental disputes, in corruption matters. But using it to grant a divorce — when the divorce law itself does not permit it — is rare and controversial.

The court cited three recent judgments: Rakesh Raman v. Kavita (2023), Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan (2023), and Samar Ghosh v. Jaya Ghosh. These cases had established that when a marriage has irretrievably broken down — when the emotional bond is dead and there is no chance of revival — the Supreme Court can step in under Article 142 and grant divorce, even if the statutory grounds under the Hindu Marriage Act are not fully made out.

The court held that continued bitterness, dead emotions, and long separation can be construed as a case of irretrievable breakdown of marriage, which is itself a facet of cruelty. Keeping parties together despite irretrievable breakdown, the court said, amounts to cruelty on both sides.

Twelve years, one conclusion

The bench's reasoning was blunt. Twelve years of separation. A child who had never seen her parents together. Mutual allegations of cruelty and dowry demands. The wife's insistence that the husband move to Udaipur — a condition he had never accepted. The husband's repeated attempts to end the marriage through multiple legal proceedings.

"When there is irretrievable breakdown of marriage," the court held, "dissolution of marriage is the only solution."

But the court did not stop at granting divorce. It imposed conditions to protect the wife and daughter.

The husband was directed to deposit Rs. 20,00,000 (twenty lakh rupees) in the wife's bank account within six months. This amount was to be kept as a fixed deposit. The wife would receive the quarterly interest. The principal could be encashed only after five years. Until the deposit was made, the husband had to pay monthly maintenance of Rs. 15,000.

The court also ordered visitation rights for the father, with the terms to be decided by the Mediation Centre at the High Court of Tripura within three months.

The High Court judgment of February 28, 2022 was quashed and set aside.

THE PLAY: When lower courts refuse divorce on statutory grounds, frame the appeal around irretrievable breakdown and Article 142 — but only if the separation is long (10+ years) and both parties have clearly moved on.

The marriage that ended with a bank deposit

The Supreme Court did not save the marriage. It declared it dead, then buried it with a cheque. The daughter got a fixed deposit. The wife got quarterly interest. The husband got his freedom.

Twelve years after she left while pregnant, the legal knot was finally cut — not by the law of divorce, but by a constitutional power that exists only in the country's highest court.