25 years apart, but still married. The Supreme Court just changed that.

They married in 1994. Within months, she was gone. 25 years later, the Supreme Court had to decide: can a marriage that's already dead be called cruelty?

By the time the case reached the Supreme Court in 2023, the couple had not lived together for a quarter of a century. No children. Every mediation attempt had failed. The bitterness between them had calcified into something permanent. And yet, the law refused to let them go.

The question was deceptively simple: When a marriage has been dead for decades, does the law have the right to keep it alive?

Within months, the marriage unravelled

The husband and wife married in Delhi in 1994 — a conventional Hindu marriage, the kind that begins with hope and ends, too often, in a courtroom. Within months, the relationship soured. There were allegations of offensive language. A pregnancy was terminated. The wife left the matrimonial home, returned, and left again.

Then came the criminal complaints.

The wife filed multiple cases against the husband, including under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (a provision that criminalises cruelty by a husband or his relatives toward the wife). She also filed a case under Section 406 (criminal breach of trust). These cases became the battlefield on which the marriage's last embers were extinguished.

The husband filed for divorce in 2002. He sought dissolution under Section 13(1)(ia) and (ib) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 — the grounds of cruelty and desertion. The marriage had lasted eight years on paper. In reality, it had ended within months.

The trial court said yes. The High Court said no.

On 2 May 2009, the Additional District Judge at Tis Hazari Courts in Delhi granted the divorce. The trial court's order, dated that spring day, sat in a dusty file for two years before the High Court touched it. The trial court was convinced: the wife's conduct — the repeated leaving, the criminal cases, the breakdown of all communication — amounted to cruelty and desertion.

But the Delhi High Court saw it differently. On 8 April 2011, it reversed the trial court's decision. Filing criminal cases, by itself, does not constitute cruelty under the Hindu Marriage Act, the High Court held. A wife has the right to seek legal recourse — and exercising that right cannot be punished by dissolving the marriage. Desertion, too, was not established to the High Court's satisfaction.

The husband was now trapped. The trial court had freed him. The High Court had locked the door again. He appealed to the Supreme Court.

The marriage that refused to die

By the time the Supreme Court bench — Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice J.B. Pardiwala — heard the matter on 26 April 2023, the situation had become almost absurd. The mediation room at the Supreme Court, with its worn chairs and silent clock, had produced nothing but more bitterness. The couple had been separated for 25 years. No children. No cohabitation since the late 1990s. Multiple mediation attempts had failed, each one producing nothing but more bitterness.

The husband was in his 50s. The wife was in her 50s. Both had spent more of their lives apart than together. And yet, the law still considered them married.

The Supreme Court had to decide: Was this marriage worth preserving? And if not, on what legal basis could it be dissolved?

When staying married becomes the cruelty

The husband's case was built on two grounds: cruelty and desertion. The High Court had rejected both. The Supreme Court, while not entirely disagreeing with the High Court's reasoning on criminal complaints, took a broader view.

The court looked at the totality of circumstances. Twenty-five years of separation. No cohabitation. No children. Multiple failed mediations. Existing bitterness that no court order could erase.

Then the court asked a question that cut through the legal technicalities: If a marriage has irretrievably broken down — no possibility of reconciliation, no shared life, no common future — does the continuation of that marriage itself become a form of cruelty?

The answer, the Supreme Court held, was yes. The court ruled that "the continuation of such a marriage constitutes cruelty to both parties under Section 13(1)(ia)" — a line that reframes cruelty from an act to a condition.

The reasoning was both simple and profound: forcing two people to remain legally bound to each other when every human connection between them has been dead for decades is, in itself, an act of cruelty — to both parties.

What the court said about cruelty

The Supreme Court did not create a new ground for divorce. Parliament has not yet added "irretrievable breakdown" as a separate ground under the Hindu Marriage Act, despite multiple Law Commission reports recommending it. What the court did was expand the interpretation of "cruelty" to include the breakdown itself.

The court cited several precedents. In Naveen Kohli v. Neelu Kohli (2006), the court had recognised that a marriage dead for years could not be revived by judicial decree. In Samar Ghosh v. Jaya Ghosh (2007), the court laid down illustrative circumstances where cruelty could be inferred — including prolonged separation without cohabitation and the complete breakdown of emotional bonds. In K. Srinivas Rao v. D.A. Deepa (2013), the court held that filing false criminal complaints could itself constitute cruelty. The court also drew on R. Srinivas Kumar v. R. Shametha (2019), Munish Kakkar v. Nidhi Kakkar (2020), and Neha Tyagi v. Lt. Col. Deepak Tyagi (2022), all of which reinforced the principle that long separation and bitterness could justify divorce under the cruelty provision.

The key principle the court established was this: Cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) must be assessed by examining the entire matrimonial relationship, not isolated acts. The nature of the relationship, the general behaviour of the parties, and the length of separation are all relevant factors. A marriage that has been dead for 25 years is not a marriage — it is a legal fiction that causes real pain.

The price of freedom: Rs. 30 lakhs

The Supreme Court allowed the appeal. It set aside the High Court's order and upheld the trial court's decree of divorce — though on different grounds. The divorce was granted not because the wife had filed criminal cases, but because the marriage had irretrievably broken down, and continuing it amounted to cruelty.

But the court did not stop there. It imposed a condition: the husband must pay permanent alimony of Rs. 30 lakhs to the wife within four weeks. The cheque for Rs. 30 lakhs, deposited with the Registry, was the final transaction of a marriage that had cost everything. The divorce decree would become effective only upon the deposit of this amount with the court registry.

The court used its power under Article 142 of the Constitution (which allows the Supreme Court to pass any order necessary to do complete justice) to ensure that the wife was not left without financial support. The marriage was ending, but the court's obligation to ensure fairness did not end with it.

THE PLAY: If you are in a marriage that has been dead for years — no cohabitation, no children, no possibility of reconciliation — you may now argue that the continuation of the marriage itself constitutes cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia), even if the other party's individual acts do not, by themselves, meet the legal threshold.

What this means for every stalled marriage

For practitioners, this judgment is a tool. For parties trapped in dead marriages, it is a door. The Supreme Court has effectively said: you do not need to prove that your spouse was cruel in the traditional sense — hitting, threatening, abusing. You need to prove that the marriage is over. That the separation is long. That there is no hope. That staying married has become its own form of suffering.

The court was careful not to create a blanket rule. Every case will still turn on its facts. But the direction is clear: the law must serve human reality, not the other way around.

The couple married in 1994. By 2023, they were finally free.