The decree says they married in April 2023 and separated in June of that year. She says the wedding was in April 2024
Justices Sujit Narayan Prasad and Sanjay Prasad held that even a consent decree is assailable where the consent is in question, and sent the case back to the Family Court for an inquiry into the date of marriage.
A joint petition under Section 13(B) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 was allowed by the Additional Principal Judge, Family Court, Ranchi, on 17 August 2024, dissolving the marriage of a young couple by mutual consent and directing both parties to comply with the terms they had agreed. On 13 October 2026 the Jharkhand High Court set that decree aside, because the wife says she never agreed to any of it, and because the date on which she was married — the fact from which every statutory requirement under Section 13(B) is measured — is in dispute on the record.
Two versions of the same marriage
The judgment under appeal records that the marriage was solemnised on 21 April 2023 according to Hindu rites at Ranchi; that the couple lived together but had no child; that differences arose from the inception because of different temperaments and incompatibility; that misunderstandings could not be patched up and relations worsened; and that they had been living separately since 1 June 2023 with no communication between them. It records that efforts by family members, relatives, neighbours and well-wishers to restore the conjugal life went in vain, and that the parties then mutually agreed on dissolution.
The suit was filed on 12 June 2024 and admitted for hearing on 13 June 2024. It was referred to the Mediation Centre, Ranchi to explore settlement or reunion, and a Mediation Report of 13 June 2024 reported that both parties stuck to their consent as there was no chance of leading a conjugal life together. It was recorded as agreed that after divorce neither would make any claim against the other, and that both would comply with the terms settled before the Mediation Centre.
The memo of appeal tells a different story from the first line. The marriage, the appellant pleads, was solemnised on 21 April 2024 at Simariya, Chatra, with Hindu rites, at her own house — a year later than the decree says, and in a different place. She pleads that ₹8,51,000 in cash and household items and jewellery worth ₹5,00,000 were given as dowry.
Four days after the wedding, she pleads, her mother-in-law and sister-in-law began quarrelling with her and taunting her over a Bullet motorcycle, and harassment became a daily routine; when she told her family, a compromise was held at the Ormanjhi police station on 13 May 2024, from where the husband took her back to the matrimonial home. On 13 June 2024, she pleads, when she answered back against the demands, she was brutally beaten while about three months pregnant, lost consciousness, and was taken to a hospital in Ranchi where she was forced to sign papers she did not understand; and that after returning to the matrimonial home she was given pills forcibly, as a result of which she miscarried.
She pleads that her husband, his father and his brother-in-law then dropped her at Simariya saying he would fetch her back in a few days, that he never came, and that on 3 October 2024 he sent her a copy of the decree of mutual divorce. Her case is that the order was based on false, fabricated and concocted facts produced before the Family Court.
Why the date matters
Counsel for the appellant put the legal consequence of the date dispute plainly. The Family Court erred in recording the date of marriage as 21 April 2023 when the marriage was in fact solemnised on 21 April 2024, as evidenced by the annexures to the memo of appeal. The erroneous recording of the date has vitiated the finding, rendering it patently unsustainable. On the strength of that factual error, the decree of mutual divorce was obtained on a fictitious ground, and the statutory mandate of Section 13-B has not been complied with.
The point is not technical. Section 13(B) requires that the parties have been living separately for a period of one year or more before the petition is presented. If the marriage took place on 21 April 2024 and the petition was filed on 12 June 2024, the precondition could not possibly have been met — the marriage would have been less than two months old. The decree's own narrative, with separation from 1 June 2023 and a petition in June 2024, works only on the earlier date.
The speed of it
The procedural timeline in the decree is worth reading alongside the statute, because it is unusually compressed even on the husband's own version. The joint petition was filed on 12 June 2024. It was admitted for hearing the next day, 13 June 2024. The reference to mediation and the Mediation Report both bear that same date of 13 June 2024. The decree followed on 17 August 2024 — a little over two months from filing.
Section 13(B) is built around two intervals. The first is the one-year period of living separately that must precede the petition. The second is the statutory interval between the first and second motions, which exists precisely so that a party who has consented can reconsider. The appellant's case is that on 13 June 2024 — the day the suit was admitted and the day the mediation report records that both parties stuck to their consent — she was, on her account, being beaten at her matrimonial home while three months pregnant and then taken unconscious to a hospital in Ranchi, where she was made to sign papers she did not understand. Whether that is true is for the Family Court. But it is the same date on the same record, and it is the kind of coincidence a court recording satisfaction of consent is expected to notice.
She also says she learnt of the decree only when a copy of it reached her on 3 October 2024, some six and a half weeks after it was passed, from the husband who had obtained it.
The holding
The Court held that even a consent decree may be assailable where the consent itself is in question and the statutory safeguards have not been observed. An appeal against such a decree is therefore maintainable, subject to objections raised by the opposite party, and the impugned judgment and decree cannot be sustained without proper scrutiny of the foundation fact of the date of marriage and of the voluntariness of the appellant's consent. It found that the Family Court had failed to undertake such an inquiry and had recorded its satisfaction mechanically.
The submission on behalf of the respondent-husband that no interference was warranted was not accepted. The sanctity of a decree of divorce by mutual consent rests upon strict compliance with the statutory preconditions and foundational facts, such as the date of marriage. Neither the convenience of the parties nor the existence of a purported settlement can validate a decree passed in disregard of those mandatory requirements. Where, as alleged, the very foundation fact of the marriage date is in dispute, the decree cannot be sustained without proper judicial scrutiny.
Remand, and a word to the Family Court
The judgment and decree of 17 August 2024 were quashed and set aside and the matter remitted to the Additional Principal Judge, Family Court, Ranchi, for fresh consideration. The Family Court must conduct a due inquiry into the actual date of marriage, the financial settlement as claimed by the respondent, the voluntariness of consent, and the factual aspects mandated by law, and then pass an appropriate order strictly in accordance with the settled legal position. The original suit stands restored to its original file and both parties were directed to appear before the Family Court within six weeks and lead their evidence.
The parties stand restored to the legal position obtaining immediately before the impugned decree, subject to any further order of a competent court. The Court was careful to add that setting aside the decree does not by itself constitute a finding that the appellant's allegations stand proved.
The restoration is therefore to a contest, not to a marriage. Both parties go back before the Family Court on the original suit, which now has to be decided on evidence rather than on a joint petition: the husband asserting the 2023 date and the settlement, the wife asserting the 2024 date, the dowry, the assault and the forced signatures. The Court's direction that she lead evidence in support of her claim means her allegations will be tested, which is what she has been asking for since the decree reached her in the post.
It closed with an observation addressed to the court below. The Additional Family Judge appears to have overlooked certain basic aspects of the Hindu Marriage Act; by proceeding to decree the matter without first determining the actual date of marriage, the Court below has inadvertently caused prejudice to the appellant. Such an approach, though perhaps unintended, “reflects a degree of insensitivity to the statutory requirements and to the rights of the litigants, which ought to be avoided in the course of judicial adjudication”. Md. Razaullah Ansari appeared for the appellant and Mr Binod Singh for the respondent.
The six-week timetable for the parties to appear, and the direction that the parties stand restored to the position obtaining immediately before the decree, mean the marriage is in law subsisting again while the inquiry proceeds. That is the practical consequence of setting aside a consent decree rather than remitting an order of dissolution: nothing is dissolved until the statutory conditions are found to have been met.