Jharkhand HC refuses divorce: hospital slip never named the schizophrenia the husband alleged
A division bench led by Justice Sujit Narayan Prasad upheld a Dhanbad Family Court judgment refusing a husband divorce on cruelty and mental disorder. His only medical paper, a US discharge slip, recorded altered mental status, and no doctor was examined.
A husband told a Family Court his wife had paranoid schizophrenia. The one medical paper he produced, a discharge slip from a US hospital, recorded only “Altered Mental Status Unspecified”. The Jharkhand High Court has upheld the refusal of divorce. He proved neither cruelty nor a mental disorder of the degree the law requires, it held.
Justice Sujit Narayan Prasad wrote the judgment for a division bench that also included Justice Akhil Kumar. They dismissed First Appeal No. 85 of 2025, filed by Mayank Kumar of Seraidhela, Dhanbad, against his wife, Somya Kumari.
From a Dhanbad wedding to a US flat
The appeal was filed under Section 19(1) of the Family Courts Act, 1984. It challenged a judgment of 16 December 2024 and a decree signed on 21 December 2024 by the Additional Family Court No. II, Dhanbad, in Original Suit No. 288 of 2023.
That court had dismissed the husband’s petition under Section 13(1)(i-a) and (iii) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. Those provisions allow divorce for cruelty, and for incurable unsoundness of mind or a mental disorder that makes living together unreasonable.
The Family Judge framed five issues. Two of them were whether the marriage should be dissolved for cruelty and whether it should be dissolved for incurable unsoundness of mind. The judge took them together and decided both against the husband.
The couple married at Saraidhela, Dhanbad, on 14 July 2021, after an engagement ceremony on 27 November 2020. The husband works in the United States, and his wife joined him there in October 2022. They lived together there until March 2023. There is no child.
The husband’s case: confinement, knives, hospital
The husband said the wife told him soon after the wedding that she had agreed to it under pressure from her parents. He said she stayed confined to a room, reacted violently when anyone tried to talk to her, and would not adjust to the house.
He said her parents later told him she had suffered from a mental disorder since childhood, had been treated by doctors in Mumbai and had been taken to a tantrik. He said the wedding was held at Dhanbad rather than her home city Ranchi to hide this.
In the US, he said, she attacked him with a kitchen knife and tried to take her own life. He said the marriage was never consummated there.
He said a hospital check-up on 12 January 2023 was followed by a sudden deterioration on the way to the airport, and her admission to a Wilmington hospital. There, he said, she was diagnosed with a psychotic disorder and anaemia.
His father died on 13 January 2023, and he said he missed the shraddha ceremony because of her admission. On 6 February 2023, he said, she was admitted for a week and declared a patient of paranoid schizophrenia.
Her answer: cold, cough and an airport
Somya Kumari denied all of it. She told the court she was not mentally ill, that she wanted to live with her husband for life, and that his family had caused her mental trauma by calling her ill. She said the marriage was solemnised at Dhanbad on the instruction of his family so that their relatives could attend.
She said she had been taken to a doctor in the US for cold, cough and weakness. She admitted being admitted to hospital there, but said she did not know why.
She said that when they landed at Ranchi airport on 20 March 2023, her husband left her sitting there on the pretext of getting water and stopped answering her calls. Her parents collected her three hours later. She said she had lived apart since then. Her father backed her account.
What the husband conceded in cross-examination
The husband examined himself and one other witness, Chandra Bhusan Prasad Srivastawa. He produced a WhatsApp chat, an air ticket and the discharge slip. The wife produced marriage photographs, passport, visa, bank records and educational certificates.
Under cross-examination the husband admitted that the marriage was arranged with both families’ consent and that he had agreed to it. He admitted that she went to her parents’ home in Ranchi with his consent, and that she came to the US with his consent and lived with him until March 2023.
On the medical evidence, he admitted that the discharge slip did not mention schizophrenia. It recorded an altered mental status, unspecified, along with symptoms such as insomnia, confusion and abdominal pain. He had filed no medical certificate and no paper from the treating doctor.
He also admitted he had no knowledge of the suggestion put to him that paranoid schizophrenia has been off the US medical list since 2021. His second witness admitted he had only heard about the alleged cruelty and did not know the hospital, date or doctor.
The hearing and the appeal
Mr. Pandey Neeraj Rai appeared for the husband. He argued that the Family Judge missed the documentary and oral evidence, and that the wife had attacked him with a kitchen knife, tried to end her life and been violent to his relatives. He said her family concealed her illness before the wedding.
No one appeared for the wife on 23 September 2026, when the appeal was heard. The bench reserved judgment after hearing the husband’s counsel, and it read the trial court record, the judgment and the witnesses’ testimony before deciding.
How the bench set its test
The judges reminded themselves that in a first appeal the High Court can re-examine every question of fact and law. They also said a finding is perverse only if it ignores relevant material, rests on irrelevant material or defies logic, and a different reading of the evidence is not perversity.
They framed what they called the only seminal issue:
“Whether the petitioner is entitled to get a decree of dissolution of marriage on the basis of Section-13(1) (ia) and (iii) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955?” (para 47)
Knife attacks with no corroboration
On cruelty, the bench ran through the Supreme Court’s line of cases, from Dr. N.G. Dastane to Joydeep Majumdar. Cruelty has no fixed definition and may be mental or physical. The conduct must be grave and weighty, and ordinary wear and tear does not count.
The judges found the allegation unproved. The serious claims, they said, of a knife attack, attempts at suicide and violent conduct, had no independent witness, medical record, police report or contemporaneous document behind them.
The husband’s second witness had not seen any incident, and his evidence was based on what he had heard. The bench held that such hearsay cannot support a finding of cruelty.
The husband’s own admissions also counted against him. The parties stayed in regular contact after the engagement. She lived in the matrimonial home and later travelled to the US with his consent and stayed until March 2023. The judges called these facts wholly inconsistent with grave cruelty.
Mental disorder needs expert proof
The judges turned to Section 13(1)(iii). The provision has two limbs. The first is incurable unsoundness of mind. The second is a mental disorder of such a kind and extent that the petitioner cannot reasonably be expected to live with the respondent, and it need not be incurable.
The bench said either condition must be proved through expert evidence that satisfies the court. The burden lies on the spouse relying on it. The wording on how long the spouse has been suffering means the illness should not be too short, and a petition should not rest on one or two incidents.
A psychiatrist is an expert under Section 45 of the Evidence Act, they said, but the court may accept or reject the opinion and test the witness like any other. Other evidence of the spouse’s behaviour can strengthen or weaken the opinion.
The bench relied on Kollam Chandra Sekhar v. Kollam Padma Latha, which quoted Ram Narain Gupta. It said that if mere abnormality of any degree could end a marriage, few marriages would survive in law.
“does not ipso facto furnish a ground for dissolution of marriage” (para 85)
A thin medical record, an educated wife
Applying that, the bench found that the husband relied mainly on his own testimony and on one discharge slip. The slip did not record schizophrenia, and he had filed no expert evidence. Beyond vague assertions of abnormal behaviour, nothing showed a disorder of such severity that living together was impossible.
The judges noted that the wife had graduated in English from St. Xavier’s College and worked for several years in an airline organisation. No evidence showed she had been in psychiatric treatment since childhood, or that her parents had concealed anything before the marriage.
They described the plea of mental illness as raised on a flimsy ground.
What the Family Court had found
The bench set out the trial judge’s findings at length. The Family Court had looked at wedding and function photographs and found the wife conscious and happy. It noted her good academic record, and that she attended court on every date and gave intelligent evidence.
On the US treatment, the Family Court noted that a doctor had opined she had some symptoms of schizophrenia and had given medicine. A short spell of depression and treatment, it held, did not show a mental disorder. It added that the husband had made no complaint of cruelty at a police station or in court.
The High Court held that these findings rested on proper appreciation of the evidence. They did not show perversity, illegality or jurisdictional error.
Order
The High Court dismissed the appeal. It held that the Family Court’s judgment of 16 December 2024 and decree signed on 21 December 2024 in Original Suit No. 288 of 2023 needed no interference.
Pending interlocutory applications were disposed of. Judgment was reserved on 23 September 2026 and pronounced on 5 November 2026.