He said a village deed ended their marriage. She said it didn't. The Supreme Court just settled it.

He handed her a divorce deed signed by village elders. The High Court said: marriage over. The Supreme Court said: not so fast.

The deed itself was a single sheet of paper, covered in signatures and thumbprints — the husband's, the wife's, their parents', and members of the Gram Panchayat. In a village meeting, it must have seemed final. But in the Supreme Court, that piece of paper became the centre of a legal question that would determine whether a marriage had truly ended, or whether a woman was still entitled to protection from the law.

Sanjana Kumari and Vijay Kumar married on 11 March 2011. By early 2014, the marriage had soured. On 5 January 2014, according to the husband, something decisive happened: a 'Customary Divorce Deed' was executed between the two, signed by both spouses, their parents, and members of the Gram Panchayat. The husband treated the marriage as dissolved. He remarried on 2 April 2018.

But the wife saw things differently. In June 2018, she filed a complaint under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (a law that allows women to seek protection, maintenance, and other relief from domestic abuse). The husband responded by asking the trial court to dismiss her complaint outright, arguing that the customary divorce deed had already ended the marriage, so the Domestic Violence Act no longer applied.

When the magistrate said no

The Judicial Magistrate First Class at Kandaghat, District Solan, Himachal Pradesh, heard the husband's application in a small courtroom where the ceiling fan creaked with each rotation. The magistrate rejected the husband's application. More importantly, the magistrate granted the wife interim maintenance of Rs. 3,000 per month — a modest sum, but a signal that the court considered the marriage still alive and the wife entitled to support. The magistrate's reasoning was straightforward: the deed had been produced, but its validity was not something to be decided on a mere application for dismissal. The wife's complaint deserved to be heard on its merits.

The husband did not accept this. He approached the Himachal Pradesh High Court under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (the High Court's inherent power to intervene in cases to prevent abuse of process or secure justice). The High Court agreed with the husband. It accepted the customary divorce deed at face value, held that the marriage had indeed dissolved, and quashed the wife's entire complaint. The maintenance order was set aside.

That is where the case stood when Sanjana Kumari reached the Supreme Court.

The question the Supreme Court had to answer

The core issue was deceptively simple: Could a customary divorce deed, produced without any evidence that the custom actually existed, be used to shut down a domestic violence case at the very start?

The wife argued that the High Court had made a fundamental error. It had treated the customary divorce deed as valid without requiring the husband to prove that the custom it claimed to represent was real, longstanding, and legally recognised. The husband countered that the deed itself was sufficient — it was signed by both parties, their parents, and panchayat members. What more proof could be needed?

The Supreme Court framed the legal question under Section 29(2) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 (a provision that saves customary divorces from being automatically invalid under the general Hindu marriage law). The Court noted that customary divorce is an exception to the general rule that Hindu marriages can only be dissolved by a decree of divorce from a court. And exceptions, the Court said, must be proved — not assumed.

Why the High Court got it wrong

The Supreme Court bench — Justice Surya Kant and Justice Dipankar Datta — delivered a crisp judgment on 18 September 2023. The courtroom in New Delhi was silent as the husband's lawyer argued that the deed should be accepted at face value. The bench listened, then delivered its reasoning.

First, the Court held that "a party relying on a customary divorce deed is obligated to establish that such custom has been uniformly observed for a long time, is not unreasonable or opposed to public policy, and is protected by Section 29(2) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955." Until such proof is furnished, there is a statutory presumption that the marriage continues to exist. The husband had offered no evidence of the custom — no witnesses, no historical instances, no documentation beyond the deed itself. The High Court should not have accepted the deed at face value.

Second, the Court held that a complaint under Section 12 of the Domestic Violence Act (the provision that allows a woman to approach a magistrate for relief) cannot be quashed at the threshold on the ground that it is not maintainable, based solely on an unproven customary divorce deed. The validity of such a deed is a question of fact — it requires specific pleading and cogent evidence. It cannot be decided on a mere application for dismissal.

What the Supreme Court ordered

The Supreme Court allowed the appeal in part. The High Court's order of 31 August 2022 was set aside. The case was sent back to the High Court to decide the husband's application afresh, but with a clear instruction: the High Court could not place any reliance on the customary divorce deed dated 5 January 2014. The validity of that deed would have to be determined separately by a court of competent jurisdiction — not assumed by the High Court while deciding whether the wife's complaint should survive.

The interim maintenance of Rs. 3,000 per month, which the magistrate had granted on 31 May 2019, was restored. The husband was directed to pay the arrears within one month. The parties were directed to appear before the High Court on 30 October 2023.

THE PLAY: A customary divorce deed is not a magic wand — the party relying on it must plead and prove the custom with evidence before any court can treat the marriage as dissolved.

What this means for practitioners

For lawyers handling matrimonial disputes, the message is clear. A customary divorce deed may look like a clean break on paper, but it carries no legal weight unless the custom behind it is established through proper evidence. The Supreme Court has reaffirmed that the presumption of a subsisting marriage under the Hindu Marriage Act cannot be displaced by a document alone. The party asserting the custom must show that it has been uniformly observed, is not unreasonable, and has the protection of Section 29(2).

For husbands who believe a panchayat deed ends all obligations, the judgment is a warning: the Domestic Violence Act does not vanish because a piece of paper says the marriage is over. The court will look behind the document.

For wives in similar situations, the judgment offers a practical shield. A husband cannot use an unproven customary divorce deed to get a domestic violence case dismissed at the threshold. The wife gets her day in court, and the maintenance she needs to survive while the case proceeds.

The Supreme Court cited three precedents — Yamanaji H. Jadhav v. Nirmala (2002), Subramani v. M. Chandralekha (2005), and Swapnanjali Sandeep Patil v. Sandeep Ananda Patil (2020) — all of which stand for the same principle: custom must be proved, not presumed.

The case now returns to the Himachal Pradesh High Court. The husband will have to decide whether to actually prove the custom he claims exists — or whether the deed was, all along, just a piece of paper signed in a village, with no law behind it.

The Supreme Court ended where it began: with a deed, and a question about what it really meant.