The family court had turned the wife away on a technicality: she had not produced specific evidence of cruelty. The High Court took a different view of the same facts. A husband who kept his wife out of the matrimonial home for thirteen years, who did not appear to deny a word of her allegations, and who had plainly no intention of resuming married life, had by that conduct itself been cruel to her. The Court was careful to add that it could not grant divorce on irretrievable breakdown as such, but held that the prolonged deprivation of married life was cruelty, and granted the decree.
Patna: The Patna High Court has granted a wife a decree of divorce that a family court had refused, holding that a husband who deprived her of married life for about thirteen years, and never came forward to contest her allegations, had thereby subjected her to cruelty entitling her to dissolution of the marriage [Soni Kumari v. Sajjan Kumar].
A Division Bench of Justice Bibek Chaudhuri and Justice Rana Vikram Singh allowed the wife’s appeal, set aside the family court’s judgment, and directed that a decree for dissolution of marriage be drawn up.
The background
The parties married in May 2007, and a son was born of the marriage in January 2009. According to the wife’s case, the husband, a retired serviceman, repeatedly declined to take her to his place of work after the marriage and, over the years, kept her away from the matrimonial home on one pretext or another. She alleged that she was deprived of her husband’s company, subjected to abusive language and aspersions on her character, and that attempts by her father and brother to settle the dispute were rebuffed. On her account, she was permanently ousted from the matrimonial home in February 2013, and the husband thereafter neither resumed married life nor looked after their minor son.
These are the allegations as set out in the wife’s pleadings. The Principal Judge, Family Court at Lakhisarai, had dismissed her divorce petition ex parte in June 2024.
An uncontested case
A feature that weighed with the Court was the husband’s complete absence from the proceedings. Despite service of notice, he had not appeared to contest the petition before the family court, and before the High Court too, after several attempts, notice was ultimately served by substituted service through paper publication, yet he did not come forward.
His conduct, the Court held, clearly showed that he was not willing to live with the appellant as husband and wife; the parties had been living separately since February 2013, for more than thirteen years; and the allegations of cruelty had gone unchallenged by him. From this the Court concluded that the marital tie between the parties had been irretrievably broken.
Breakdown alone is not a ground, but the deprivation is cruelty
The Court was careful about the limits of its own power. It expressly recorded that, notwithstanding its finding that the marriage had irretrievably broken down, it was not in a position to pass a decree on that ground, the power to dissolve a marriage on the ground of irretrievable breakdown being one that the Supreme Court exercises under Article 142, not one available to a High Court in an ordinary matrimonial appeal.
But it held that the same conduct could be viewed through the lens of cruelty, which is a statutory ground:
“…the conduct of the respondent irretrievably breaking down the marriage is a ground of cruelty, where the wife is deprived of having matrimonial relationship continued with her husband.”
The trial court, the High Court held, had gone wrong by deciding the matter on strict technicalities, faulting the wife for not producing specific evidence of cruelty, when the husband had not come forward to deny her allegations and there had been no matrimonial relationship for a long and continuous period of thirteen years. In those circumstances, the deprivation of married life should itself have been treated as cruelty, and the family court ought to have granted a decree. Holding that the impugned judgment could not be sustained, the Court set it aside and granted the wife a decree of divorce.
Why it matters
The judgment is a neat illustration of an important distinction in matrimonial law. Irretrievable breakdown of marriage is not, by itself, a ground for divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act; only the Supreme Court can dissolve a marriage purely on that basis, exercising its power to do complete justice under Article 142. A High Court hearing a divorce appeal is confined to the statutory grounds, of which cruelty is one. The significance of this decision lies in the bridge it builds between the two: it holds that the same facts that show a marriage has broken down, here a husband’s sustained refusal to let his wife share his life, can independently establish cruelty, which is a ground a High Court can act on.
That reasoning matters for spouses, often wives, left in a legal limbo: deserted in substance, but unable to reach the Supreme Court and its Article 142 jurisdiction to have a dead marriage formally ended. By recognising that prolonged, deliberate deprivation of married life is itself a form of mental cruelty, the Court gives such litigants a route to relief within the ordinary statutory framework. The point that cruelty need not always be proved by discrete incidents, but can be inferred from a sustained course of conduct, especially where the other spouse does not even appear to deny it, is a useful one.
The correction of the trial court’s approach is the practical heart of the decision. A family court that dismisses a genuinely deserted spouse’s petition for want of documentary proof of specific cruel acts, while the other side stays away entirely, elevates form over substance. The High Court’s insistence that thirteen years of enforced separation, uncontested, speaks for itself is a reminder that matrimonial adjudication is meant to respond to the reality of a relationship, not to punish a party for the evidentiary thinness that desertion itself tends to produce. The decree brings a long-dead marriage to a formal close and, with it, some measure of closure for the appellant.
Case Title: Soni Kumari v. Sajjan Kumar [Miscellaneous Appeal No. 973 of 2024]
Bench: Justice Bibek Chaudhuri and Justice Rana Vikram Singh, High Court of Judicature at Patna
Date of Judgment: September 17, 2026
Appearance: Advocate Ram Jiban Pd. Singh for the appellant. The respondent did not appear.
Status: Appeal allowed. Family court’s dismissal set aside; decree of divorce granted on the ground of cruelty.
This report refers, in the context of allegations recorded by the Court, to a remark about suicide. If you or someone you know needs support, the Tele-MANAS national mental health helpline can be reached at 14416 or 1-800-891-4416, round the clock.