He pleaded irretrievable breakdown in Kolkata, then argued Indian law knows no such ground
Upholding the vacation of an anti-suit injunction, the Court holds that foreign proceedings still at an inchoate stage should not be halted, and that London was the convenient forum.
A husband who had already asked a Kolkata court to dissolve his marriage on the ground that it had broken down irretrievably went on to argue that a divorce decree from a UK court would be unenforceable in India, because irretrievable breakdown is not a recognised ground under Indian law. On 22 September 2026, in Mihir Prakash Bajoria v. Vidushi Jain Bajoria, a Bench of Justice S.V.N. Bhatti and Justice N.V. Anjaria dismissed his appeal and upheld the Calcutta High Court’s decision vacating the anti-suit injunction he had obtained against his wife.
The judgment is a compact restatement of when an Indian court may restrain a party from pursuing a case abroad — and, more pointedly, of when it may not.
London, Kolkata, London, Kolkata
The relationship dates to 2014–2015, when the respondent-wife moved to the United Kingdom for higher studies and cohabited with the appellant-husband in London, who is stated to have helped her secure employment. They married in Kolkata on 15 December 2018 according to Hindu customs, and lived together in London between 2018 and 2020 at Flat 14, Academy Gardens.
In February 2021 the wife left the UK and returned to India, remaining here until March 2022, studying pranic healing at an ashram. In March 2022 the husband arranged her spousal visa so that they could resume matrimonial life in the UK. The parties returned to India in October 2023 and lived at the husband’s family residence in Kolkata, while he travelled abroad for business. From 11 November 2023 they began living separately under the same roof, and on 16 November 2023 the wife left for her parental home in Kolkata.
On 4 September 2024 the husband instituted Matrimonial Suit No. 2643 of 2024 before the First Additional District Judge at Alipore under Section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, seeking dissolution of the marriage. His pleaded ground was that the parties had not cohabited since November 2023 and that the marriage had broken down irretrievably.
On 10 October 2024 the wife filed proceedings before the UK Family Court seeking dissolution on the ground of irretrievable breakdown, together with ancillary proceedings the same day claiming interim financial relief and related monetary orders. By an order of 6 December 2024 the UK Family Court allocated the matter to a District Judge, treating it as a complex case. The husband participated in those proceedings.
The injunction, and its vacation
The husband then filed Title Suit No. 1656 of 2025 at Alipore. On 1 November 2025 the Civil Judge, Senior Division, 1st Court, Alipore granted him an anti-suit injunction restraining the wife, her agents and servants from prosecuting the proceedings before the UK Family Court.
The wife appealed. By judgment dated 15 December 2025 in FMAT No. 466 of 2025, a Division Bench of the High Court at Calcutta allowed her appeal and set the injunction aside. The husband brought the matter to the Supreme Court.
Appearing for him, Senior Counsel Ms Meenakshi Arora argued that the Alipore court was justified in restraining parallel proceedings before a foreign court which were oppressive; that it had exercised its jurisdiction within the settled parameters governing anti-suit injunctions, to prevent multiplicity of proceedings and the possibility of conflicting decisions; and that the High Court had overlooked that the parties were Indian citizens married in India under Hindu law.
When an Indian court may stop a foreign case
The Court began from first principles. An anti-suit injunction restrains a party from instituting or prosecuting a case in another court, including a foreign court, outside the injuncting court’s jurisdiction. The parameters governing injunctions generally apply to it, and because equity lies at the heart of injunctive relief, so does it here.
The governing principles come from Modi Entertainment Network v. W.S.G. Cricket Pte. Ltd.: the defendant against whom the injunction is sought must be amenable to the personal jurisdiction of the court; if the injunction is declined, the ends of justice must be defeated and injustice perpetuated; and the comity of courts must be respected. Where more than one forum is available, the court exercising its discretion will consider which is the appropriate forum having regard to the convenience of the parties.
The twin prime considerations, the Bench said, are the oppressive or vexatious nature of the foreign proceedings and irreparable harm. It underlined why the bar is set high: an anti-suit injunction tends to interfere with the exercise of jurisdiction by a court in another sovereign territory to which the injuncting court’s own jurisdiction does not extend.
Hence the caution the Court drew from Dinesh Singh Thakur v. Sonal Thakur, that such orders should be granted sparingly and not as a matter of routine, since they involve a court impinging on the jurisdiction of another court — something not entertained easily, especially where the restraint is on continuing a case in a foreign court. The grant of an anti-suit injunction, the Bench held, is not a matter of course and not a routine judicial exercise; a court should be extremely slow to issue one unless pure legal or jurisdictional considerations apply.
The convenient forum was London
The High Court had approached the matter through the doctrine of forum non conveniens, which asks whether the court seised is a convenient forum for the parties or whether another forum exists where they may more conveniently litigate — a doctrine applied particularly in matrimonial proceedings to advance the interests of justice. Ordinarily the burden of showing that the forum is inconvenient, or the proceedings oppressive or vexatious, lies on the party asserting it.
On the facts the Bench held the High Court was justified in concluding that the convenient forum was the court in the UK. The husband had been residing in the UK for several years, since the age of fourteen or fifteen. The wife had been in the UK on a student visa and was a habitual resident there. Although the marriage was solemnised at Kolkata, for most of the period before and after it the parties resided at the London address, and at the time the Indian suit was filed the wife was resident in the UK.
Two answers the husband could not overcome
His central submission was that because irretrievable breakdown is not a recognised ground for divorce under Indian law, any decree the UK Family Court passed on that ground would lack efficacy or enforceability here — and that the Indian proceedings should therefore be protected.
The Court held the ground entirely misplaced, given the stage and status of the suit before the UK Family Court. Those proceedings are pending and all issues are at large, including the jurisdiction of that court. An objection about the enforceability of a decree that does not yet exist, on a ground the foreign court has not yet ruled on, is premature.
The second answer is the one with the widest reach. A factor that should dissuade a court from granting an anti-suit injunction is that the foreign proceedings sought to be interrupted have not concluded. No legitimate ground or logical reason will generally arise to stay foreign proceedings by anti-suit injunction while they remain at an inchoate stage and have not culminated in a final decision. By granting the injunction while the UK proceedings were still running, the Alipore court committed what the Bench called a patent error.
One development complicated the picture. While the appeal was pending, an English District Judge at the Birmingham Civil and Family Justice Centre passed a conditional divorce decree on 17 June 2026. On the husband’s application, this Court on 30 July 2026 restrained the wife, her agents and servants from proceeding pursuant to that order. The Bench was careful to confine its judgment: the challenge before it remained the anti-suit injunction of 1 November 2025, and it examined only the merits of that order and the legal justification for its vacation. Either party remains at liberty to challenge any further or final orders of the UK Family Court, including the order of 17 June 2026, before the competent forum on grounds available in law.
What it means for cross-border marriages
Marriages that span two countries increasingly generate proceedings in both, and the instinct of the spouse who prefers the Indian forum is to ask an Indian court to shut the foreign one down. This judgment narrows that route considerably.
Indian citizenship and a Hindu marriage solemnised in India are not, by themselves, enough. The Bench did not treat those facts as decisive; what mattered was where the parties had actually lived, where the wife was resident when the Indian suit was filed, and how far the foreign proceedings had gone. On the first two the answer was London, and on the third the answer was that the case had barely begun.
The timing point deserves emphasis because it cuts both ways. A litigant who waits until a foreign court is close to a decree will face the objection that the proceedings are all but concluded; one who moves early, as here, will face the objection that they are inchoate. The narrow window the doctrine leaves is a function of what an anti-suit injunction actually is — an Indian court telling a party that a foreign sovereign’s court may not decide a case properly before it. That is why the Bench described the remedy as one to be granted sparingly, why the burden sits on the party seeking it, and why oppression and irreparable harm, not mere inconvenience or the prospect of an unwelcome result, are what must be shown.
Order
For the reasons given by the High Court and those additionally set out by it, the Bench held the judgment dated 15 December 2025 of the High Court at Calcutta in FMAT No. 466 of 2025 — allowing the appeal, setting aside the Alipore order of 1 November 2025 and vacating the anti-suit injunction — to be eminently just and legal, and upheld it. The appeal was dismissed, and all pending interlocutory applications were held not to survive.