Reversing a family court that had dismissed a wife’s divorce petition for want of specific proof of cruelty, the Patna High Court granted her a decree, holding that a husband who kept his wife out of the matrimonial home for 13 years, and never contested her allegations, had by that very conduct inflicted cruelty. The Court held it could not grant divorce on irretrievable breakdown alone, but that the prolonged deprivation of married life amounted to cruelty.
