Both sides told the Court they wanted the marriage over. Orissa High Court still refused to rest the decree on that

Chief Justice Harish Tandon and Justice Chittaranjan Dash uphold a cruelty divorce on the cumulative effect of the evidence, with the defence's own witnesses corroborating the confrontation that ended the marriage.

A marriage of twenty months between two software engineers ended in a Hyderabad flat with the husband telling the building's owner and security staff that unknown persons had entered and were taking his property. The persons were his wife's parents. The Family Court at Rayagada dissolved the marriage for cruelty; the husband appealed. A Division Bench of the Orissa High Court has dismissed his appeal — and taken care to say that although both parties now want the marriage ended, that is not what the decree rests on.

A short marriage

The parties married on 20 October 2021 according to Hindu rites. Both are B.Tech graduates employed in the information technology sector. They lived first at Visakhapatnam and then at Hyderabad. Differences developed, and in June 2023 the wife left the matrimonial home and went to Rayagada with her parents.

She then filed a petition before the Family Court at Rayagada seeking dissolution on the ground of cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act. The husband contested it. By judgment of 27 January 2024 the Family Court partly allowed the proceeding and dissolved the marriage, holding that cruelty had been established. This appeal under Section 28 of the Hindu Marriage Act read with Section 19 of the Family Courts Act followed.

The husband's case on appeal was that the allegations were neither established by cogent evidence nor sufficient to constitute cruelty; that he had subjected her to no physical or mental cruelty and had denied the allegations in his counter and in evidence; that the parties had in fact lived together and enjoyed their matrimonial life at Visakhapatnam and Hyderabad; and that after the separation he had instituted proceedings under Section 9 of the Act for restitution of conjugal rights, which showed he wanted the marriage to continue.

For the wife it was argued that she had specifically pleaded acts of physical and mental cruelty and adduced evidence, and that the husband's conduct viewed cumulatively caused her sustained mental agony and made continuation of the relationship impossible.

Cruelty assessed cumulatively

The Bench set out the standard it was applying before coming to the facts. Mental cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) is conduct that inflicts mental pain and suffering of such a nature that the parties cannot reasonably be expected to live together, so that the wronged party cannot reasonably be asked to put up with it and continue. It is not necessary to prove injury to health. Regard must be had to the social status and educational level of the parties, the society they move in and the possibility of their ever living together again — and what is cruelty in one case may not be cruelty in another.

The approach came from Rakesh Raman v. Kavita, which draws on the three-Judge Bench in Samar Ghosh v. Jaya Ghosh. Matrimonial cases pose a different challenge from any other, because the Court is dealing with human relationships with all their faults and frailties; it is not possible in every case to pinpoint an act of cruelty, and the nature of the relationship, the general behaviour of the parties towards each other and long separation are all relevant. What has to be examined is the entire matrimonial relationship, because cruelty may lie not in a violent act but in injurious reproaches, complaints, accusations and taunts.

Applying that, the Court held the evidence could not be compartmentalised. The wife's case did not rest on one isolated incident.

The defence evidence that did the damage

Her account of the final episode was that when she and her parents reached the Hyderabad residence, the husband contacted the house owner and the security personnel and represented that unknown persons had entered the house and were taking away his property, so that she and her parents were confronted and humiliated. She said that the husband and his mother then assaulted her, and that when her father intervened he too was assaulted; that relatives were called; and that she and her father were humiliated and asked to leave on the allegation that the expectations of the husband's family had not been fulfilled. Those circumstances, she said, left her feeling unsafe and compelled her to leave for Rayagada.

Her father's evidence could not be discarded merely because he is her father, the Court held, particularly as he claims to have been personally present and to have been assaulted while intervening for his daughter.

But the Bench rested its conclusion on something firmer: the defence evidence itself. One of the husband's own witnesses admitted that on 4 June 2023 the parties and the wife's parents and brother were present at the Hyderabad house; that an issue arose there; that she called her brother and other relatives; and that discussions followed. She further admitted that the wife left the matrimonial home the next day. Whatever label each side puts on that incident, the Court held, the defence evidence establishes that the wife's departure was preceded by a serious confrontation in the matrimonial home.

A second admission came out of the husband's own cross-examination. He accepted that when the wife did not answer his telephone call on an earlier occasion, he contacted the watchman of the Hyderabad residence and asked him to ascertain who the persons inside the house were — while admitting that her parents had previously visited and stayed in that residence. That circumstance, the Court said, lends some support to her version of an atmosphere of distrust and humiliation surrounding her and her parents at the matrimonial home.

Taken together with the circumstances of her departure and the subsequent failure of the relationship, those incidents disclosed a course of matrimonial conduct that caused sustained mental distress, and their cumulative effect was sufficient to bring the case within Section 13(1)(ia).

The settlement that failed, and what the Court made of it

There was then a development the Bench described as significant and declined to ignore.

On 20 March 2026 the parties appeared in person before the High Court and, after an interaction in camera, were given an opportunity to explore ending the litigation by settlement. None could be reached. What was significant was that during that interaction both parties expressed their willingness to put an end to the matrimonial relationship, and proposed to place a joint affidavit to that effect before the Court.

The judgment is careful about the use it makes of this. That subsequent conduct is not a substitute for the statutory requirement of establishing cruelty, and is not being treated as a decree by mutual consent. It is nevertheless a relevant circumstance in appreciating the present state of the relationship.

The Bench then stated its view of what a court is preserving when it refuses a divorce. Marriage carries a sanctity the Court must ordinarily endeavour to preserve, but that sanctity is not served by preserving only the legal form of the relationship when its substantive foundation has been substantially eroded. Mutual respect, trust, companionship and a willingness to make reasonable adjustments are not peripheral attributes of matrimonial life — they constitute its foundation. Where those have been progressively lost and the relationship has become a source of sustained mental pain, the Court cannot shut its eyes to its reality merely because the deterioration does not fit one neatly defined category of conduct.

On the doctrinal question the Bench was explicit. It is conscious that irretrievable breakdown of marriage is not by itself a statutory ground for dissolution under the Hindu Marriage Act. The subsequent course of a relationship can, however, be taken into account in determining whether the conduct proved has resulted in mental cruelty, and whether continuing the relationship has itself become a source of further anguish. For that it relied on K. Srinivas Rao v. D.A. Deepa, where the Supreme Court recognised that although breakdown is not a ground, the fact that a marriage is beyond repair on account of the bitterness created by the parties' conduct may be a weighty circumstance in examining cruelty — and which contains the recommendation that the Act be amended to incorporate irretrievable breakdown as a ground.

The judgment therefore records that it does not rest the decree merely on the parties having ceased to live together, or on their having expressed a common desire at the appellate stage to end the marriage. The foundation of the decree remains the cruelty established from the evidence; the subsequent course of the relationship, including the unsuccessful settlement and the statements made in March 2026, only reinforces the conclusion that the relationship has lost its essential character and that compelling the wife to resume it would be unrealistic.

Order

On the husband's reliance on his Section 9 petition, the Court did not treat the circumstance as insignificant — it indicates that at that stage he sought restoration of cohabitation. But a subsequent assertion of willingness cannot by itself efface the conduct that preceded the separation or negate the effect that conduct had on the wife. The question remained whether, on the evidence as a whole, she had been subjected to cruelty, and the cumulative circumstances answered it in the affirmative.

Holding that the finding was founded not merely on separation or on the subsequent breakdown but on the cumulative effect of the conduct established and the circumstances in which the relationship deteriorated, the Bench found no infirmity in the Family Court's judgment and dismissed the appeal.

The judgment is worth reading for how it handles a situation that arises often and is rarely addressed openly: an appeal in which neither spouse any longer wants the marriage, and the appellate court could simply let the decree stand on that basis. This Bench refused the shortcut, and explained why — breakdown is not a ground Parliament has enacted, and a decree resting on it would be a decree without a statutory foundation. The route it takes instead is the one Samar Ghosh opened: read the whole relationship, let the later history illuminate the earlier conduct, and anchor the decree in the cruelty that was proved. The practical difference matters on a further appeal, where a decree founded on evidence is far harder to disturb than one founded on the parties' present wishes.