12 years apart, still married. Then the Supreme Court stepped in.

They hadn't lived together for 12 years. Two courts said: stay married. The Supreme Court said: staying married is the real cruelty.

In 2007, a couple married in Tripura. By 2010, the wife was back at her parents' house, pregnant. She never returned. For twelve years, they lived apart—two separate lives, two separate cities, one daughter caught in the middle. Two courts refused to grant a divorce. Then the Supreme Court looked at the marriage and asked a question that changed everything: What cruelty is worse than forcing two strangers to stay legally bound to each other?

2010. She left while pregnant.

The marriage lasted barely three years. The husband, working in Agartala, claimed his wife prioritised her job over family and disrespected his parents. The wife alleged cruelty and dowry demands. She insisted she would only live in Udaipur—not Agartala, where her husband worked. In 2010, while pregnant, she left for her parents' home. She never returned.

A daughter was born in 2011. She lived with her mother. The husband tried everything to bring his wife back. He filed a petition for restitution of conjugal rights (a court order that asks a spouse to return to the marriage). The Family Court in Agartala dismissed it. He appealed to the High Court of Tripura, then withdrew the appeal. The marriage was already a ghost.

The physical distance between Agartala and Udaipur—roughly 2,500 kilometres—mirrored the emotional chasm that had opened between them. The wife's insistence on living only in Udaipur, where her parents resided, meant that any hope of reconciliation required one of them to abandon their life entirely. Neither would budge.

2019. The husband files for divorce. Two courts say no.

The husband argued cruelty and desertion—two grounds under Section 13(1) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. The Family Court in West Tripura dismissed the petition. More than a decade of separation, the court held, did not amount to cruelty. The marriage, the court believed, was not beyond repair.

The husband appealed to the High Court of Tripura. The High Court agreed. It saw no reason to dissolve the marriage. The bench felt the relationship could still be salvaged. The husband, now separated for over a decade, was told to stay married.

The courtroom in Agartala, with its slow-turning ceiling fans and stacks of ageing case files, had heard this story before—spouses who could not live together but could not legally part. The smell of old paper and dust hung in the air as the judges read out their order. The husband sat in the gallery, a man who had been legally married for twelve years but had not shared a home with his wife for most of them.

The Supreme Court asks a different question

By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, the couple had been apart for twelve years. The daughter was eleven. The bitterness between the spouses had only hardened. The husband argued that the marriage was dead—emotionally, practically, in every way that mattered. The wife opposed the divorce. She insisted the marriage could still work.

The Supreme Court bench—Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia—saw something the lower courts had missed. The marriage wasn't just unhappy. It was irretrievably broken. And keeping two people legally bound to a dead relationship, the court reasoned, was itself a form of cruelty.

The courtroom in the Supreme Court was hushed as the bench delivered its finding. The file before them was thin—a marriage that had produced little more than a child and a decade of legal paperwork. The daughter, now eleven, had never known a home where both parents lived under the same roof. The bench noted this fact with evident concern.

The reasoning: a dead marriage is cruelty

The court invoked Article 142 of the Constitution (the Supreme Court's power to pass any order necessary to do complete justice). It held that twelve years of separation, combined with continued bitterness and dead emotions, constituted an irretrievable breakdown of marriage. And an irretrievable breakdown, the court said, is also a facet of cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act.

The reasoning was simple but powerful: If a marriage has no emotional life left, forcing the parties to stay married is cruel to both. The cruelty is not in what one spouse did to the other, but in the legal cage that holds them together. The court cited two recent judgments—Rakesh Raman v. Kavita (2023) and Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan (2023)—both of which recognised irretrievable breakdown as a ground for divorce under Article 142.

In its reasoning, the court observed that "continued bitterness, dead emotions and long separation can be construed as a case of irretrievable breakdown of marriage, which is also a facet of cruelty." The bench further held that "keeping parties together despite irretrievable breakdown amounts to cruelty on both sides." These words, read aloud in the courtroom, settled a question that had vexed the lower courts for years: could a marriage that was already dead in every practical sense be kept alive by law alone?

The court also noted that the husband's earlier petition for restitution of conjugal rights (Section 9 of the Hindu Marriage Act) had been dismissed by the Family Court, and his appeal against that dismissal had been withdrawn. This meant that even the legal mechanism designed to bring spouses back together had failed. The marriage was not merely unhappy—it was beyond repair.

The procedural journey: a decade of litigation

The case had wound its way through the courts for over a decade. It began in 2013, when the husband filed a petition for restitution of conjugal rights before the Family Court in Agartala. That petition was transferred to the Family Court in Udaipur, where the wife resided, and was dismissed on 29 August 2013. The husband appealed to the High Court of Tripura but later withdrew the appeal.

In 2019, the husband filed a divorce petition before the Family Court in West Tripura, Agartala, arguing cruelty and desertion under Section 13(1)(ia) and 13(1)(ib) of the Hindu Marriage Act. The Family Court dismissed the petition on 8 March 2019. The husband appealed to the High Court of Tripura at Agartala, which dismissed the appeal on 28 February 2022. The High Court felt that ten-plus years of separation alone did not constitute cruelty and that the marriage was not ruptured beyond repair.

Finally, the husband approached the Supreme Court through a Special Leave Petition, which was converted into Civil Appeal No. 5454 of 2023. On 21 August 2023, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal, granting divorce and setting aside the High Court's judgment.

The price of freedom: Rs.20 lakhs for the daughter

The Supreme Court granted the divorce. But it did not let the husband walk away without responsibility. The court ordered him to deposit Rs.20,00,000 in his wife's account as a fixed deposit for their daughter's welfare. The deposit would earn quarterly interest, but the principal could only be withdrawn after five years. Until the full amount was deposited, the husband had to pay Rs.15,000 per month as maintenance.

The fixed deposit document, when it is eventually signed, will represent the final transaction of a marriage that ended long ago—a legal settlement for a child who grew up between two homes. The daughter was eleven when the judgment came. She had never seen her parents live together. Now, she never will.

The court also ordered visitation rights for the father, with the terms to be decided by the Mediation Centre of the High Court of Tripura. The decree of divorce would only be handed over after the full deposit was made. The High Court's judgment of 28 February 2022 was quashed and set aside.

The operative order was precise: the marriage was declared irretrievably broken down, a decree of divorce was granted under Article 142, and the husband was directed to deposit Rs.20,00,000 in the respondent's account within six months as a fixed deposit. The parties were directed to appear before the Mediation Centre, High Court of Tripura, on 1 September 2023 to finalise visitation terms.

THE PLAY: If your client has been separated for over a decade with no realistic chance of reconciliation, argue that the continued legal bond itself constitutes cruelty—and ask the Supreme Court to invoke Article 142 to grant divorce even when the lower courts have refused.

The daughter was eleven when the judgment came. She had never seen her parents live together. Now, she never will.