25 years apart, still married. SC says: that itself is cruelty.
A couple lived together for just 4 years, then spent 25 years in court battles. The Supreme Court finally ended the marriage—not because of who was right, but because the wait itself became a form of cruelty.
25
years.
A couple lived together for just 4 years, then spent 25 years in court battles. The Supreme Court finally ended the marriage—not because of who was right, but because the wait itself became a form of cruelty.
They married in 1994. Lived together for 4 years. Then spent 25 years fighting in court. The Supreme Court just gave the divorce—not because of who was at fault, but because the wait itself became cruelty.
In a Delhi courtroom in April 2023, a marriage that had been legally dead for decades finally received its obituary. The couple had not lived together since 1998. They had not had children. They had not spoken without a lawyer present. What they had done was file case after case, appeal after appeal, until the file itself weighed more than the relationship ever did.
The question before the bench of Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice J.B. Pardiwala was simple: Could a marriage that had been over for a quarter-century be kept alive by law alone?
When a wedding becomes a war
The story begins in Delhi in 1994. A man and a woman married, like thousands do, with hope. Within months, that hope curdled. The husband alleged his wife verbally abused him and terminated a pregnancy without his consent. The wife alleged dowry harassment—a claim that would trigger criminal complaints under Section 498A IPC (a law that criminalises cruelty by a husband or his relatives toward the wife) and Section 406 IPC (criminal breach of trust).
The wife left the matrimonial home. Then she came back. Then she left again. Each departure was followed by a police complaint. Each complaint led to an arrest. The husband was once taken into custody at a wedding.
Multiple criminal cases were filed. Multiple criminal cases ended in discharge or acquittal. But the damage was done. The marriage had become a battlefield where every fight was fought with legal weapons.
The divorce that came and went
In 2002, the husband filed for divorce under Section 13(1)(ia) and (ib) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955—cruelty and desertion (the legal grounds that allow a spouse to end a marriage when the other has treated them with cruelty or abandoned them without reasonable cause).
The trial court at Tis Hazari Courts in Delhi heard the evidence. On 2 May 2009, it granted the divorce on grounds of cruelty and desertion. The order, dated 2 May 2009, marked the first legal recognition that the marriage had failed. By then, the couple had been separated for seven years.
The wife appealed. On 8 April 2011, the Delhi High Court reversed the decision entirely. The High Court held that filing criminal complaints, by itself, did not constitute cruelty. And desertion? The High Court said it was not proven—the husband had not established that the wife left without reasonable cause.
The husband was back where he started. Married to a woman he had not lived with in over a decade.
Why the Supreme Court saw it differently
The husband appealed to the Supreme Court. The judges looked at the entire matrimonial relationship. They noted the timeline: 1994, 1998, 2002, 2009, 2011, 2023.
Twenty-five years of separation. Zero cohabitation. No children. Multiple failed mediation attempts ordered by courts.
The Supreme Court did something the High Court had not done. It looked at the whole marriage, not just the individual acts. It applied the test laid down in Samar Ghosh v. Jaya Ghosh (2007), where the Supreme Court had listed situations that could constitute cruelty—including "long period of continuous separation" and "complete breakdown of all meaningful bonds."
The Court held that 25 years of separation, with all the bitterness, litigation, and acrimony that accompanied it, had itself become a form of cruelty. Not the cruelty of a single slap or a single insult. The cruelty of a slow, grinding wait that lasted a quarter-century.
The legal logic behind the decision
The Supreme Court did not disturb the High Court's finding that criminal complaints alone do not automatically constitute cruelty. That legal proposition stands. But the Court said something more important: when assessing cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia), a judge must examine the entire matrimonial relationship—the nature of the relationship, the general behaviour of both parties, the length of separation, the failure of mediation, the absence of any possibility of reconciliation.
This is the heart of the judgment. The ratio decidendi (the court's central reasoning) is clear: where a marriage has broken down irretrievably—with long separation, no cohabitation, no children, complete breakdown of all meaningful bonds, existing bitterness, and multiple court battles—the continuation of such a marriage constitutes cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia). The Court held that "the continuation of such marriage constitutes cruelty within the meaning of Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, providing a ground for dissolution of marriage."
The Court cited a string of its own precedents: Naveen Kohli v. Neelu Kohli (2006), K. Srinivas Rao v. D.A. Deepa (2013), R. Srinivas Kumar v. R. Shametha (2019), Munish Kakkar v. Nidhi Kakkar (2020), and Neha Tyagi v. Lt. Col. Deepak Tyagi (2022). Each of these cases had moved the law incrementally toward recognising that some marriages cannot be saved—and that forcing them to continue is itself a cruelty.
The price of freedom
The Supreme Court restored the divorce decree. But it did not stop there. It used its power under Article 142 of the Constitution (the Supreme Court's power to pass any order necessary to do complete justice) to award permanent alimony of Rs. 30 lakhs to the wife.
The Court made the divorce effective only upon the deposit of this amount. The husband had to pay before the decree became operative. The operative order stated: "Permanent alimony of Rs. 30,00,000 to be deposited within four weeks. Decree effective only upon deposit."
THE PLAY: When assessing cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act, courts must examine the entire matrimonial relationship—including the length of separation, failure of mediation, and absence of any possibility of reconciliation—not merely isolated acts of blameworthy conduct.
What this means for every family lawyer
This judgment changes how practitioners should argue cruelty cases. The old approach—listing individual incidents of violence, abuse, or harassment—is no longer enough. The new approach requires showing the pattern: the years of separation, the failed reconciliations, the exhaustion of every avenue of repair.
For the wife in this case, the judgment means Rs. 30 lakhs and a final end to a marriage that had been over for decades. For the husband, it means freedom from a legal trap that had held him for 25 years.
For everyone else, it means this: the law now recognises that sometimes, the most cruel thing you can do to two people is keep them married.
The marriage ended with a trial court decree dated 2 May 2009, a High Court order dated 8 April 2011, and a Supreme Court judgment on 26 April 2023. The final order, effective only upon deposit, closed a case that had consumed two lives for a quarter-century.
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