Overview
- Granting divorce after decades of litigation, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Manmohan and Joymalya Bagchi dissolved a marriage where the spouses married in 2000, separated in 2001, and never reconciled.
- The Court restored the trial court’s decree and set aside the high court’s 2011 reversal, holding that prolonged separation with no prospect of reunion amounts to cruelty to both parties.
- Exercising Article 142, the bench found the marriage had irretrievably broken down, noting there were no children and that keeping the case pending would only preserve a marriage on paper.
- LiveLaw reports the judgment relied on precedent that long, continuous separation can warrant dissolution under the Supreme Court’s power to do complete justice.
- In a parallel ruling, the Calcutta High Court granted divorce after finding the wife’s serious allegations were uncorroborated and contradicted by her own testimony, accepted psychiatric records, and stressed courts should not bind parties to a ‘dead marriage’.