She came to move two cases from Cuttack to Mumbai. She left with the marriage dissolved and every case between the families gone
Mediation had already failed twice. Using Article 142, the Supreme Court dissolves a marriage on irretrievable breakdown, quashes all proceedings between the parties, and bars either side from filing again.
A transfer petition is among the narrowest applications the Supreme Court entertains. It asks only that a case be heard somewhere else — typically by a wife who cannot travel to the forum where proceedings against her were filed. It decides nothing about the merits of anything.
It is also, in practice, where a great many matrimonial disputes end, because once both sides are before the same Bench the Court can do something a transfer cannot. On 28 September 2026 a Bench of Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice R. Mahadevan, in a judgment by Justice Nagarathna, did exactly that.
Two petitions, and a stay on each
The wife filed two transfer petitions. The criminal one sought transfer of a charge-sheet of December 2024, arising from an FIR registered at Malgodown Police Station, Cuttack in September 2022 and pending as a GR Case before the Judicial Magistrate First Class-3, Cuttack, to the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, 4th Court, Girgaon, Mumbai. The civil one, filed by her and her family members against her mother-in-law, sought transfer of a domestic violence case pending before the Judicial Magistrate First Class-III, Cuttack, to the same court in Mumbai.
The Court issued notice in the criminal petition in June 2025 and stayed further proceedings in the charge-sheet; it issued notice in the civil petition in September 2025 and stayed the domestic violence case.
So by late 2025 the litigation was frozen but not resolved, which is the position a transfer petition tends to produce.
Mediation, twice
The parties were referred to the Supreme Court Mediation Centre. Mediation failed.
The husband then filed an application under Article 142 of the Constitution seeking dissolution of the marriage by a decree of divorce on the ground of irretrievable breakdown, and quashing of all pending litigation between the parties. The wife filed a response.
What changed the case was what her counsel said in court. In February 2026 the Court recorded, in the wife’s presence, that she was willing to settle and part ways provided a suitable settlement was arrived at, and that counsel suggested a further reference to a senior mediator. By the hearing of 5 August 2026 her counsel submitted on instructions that she was ready and willing, and had no objection to the husband’s Article 142 application being allowed for divorce by mutual consent — the only remaining issue being permanent alimony.
On that issue the Court intervened directly. Having heard detailed submissions on the wife’s medical condition, it directed the husband to enhance the permanent alimony from ₹30,00,000 to ₹35,00,000. By the date of judgment that sum had been paid in full and final settlement of all her claims.
The wife was present in person when the matter was decided.
Why Article 142 was used
The Court set out the facts that brought the case within the jurisdiction it was being asked to exercise. The parties married on 4 December 2016 at Cuttack and, owing to irreconcilable differences, began living separately from 2022. There was a long list of pending cases, both criminal and civil, filed between them — including by their family members.
Applying Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan and Rinku Baheti, the Bench held that since the marriage had come to a dead end with no possibility of reconciliation, real justice would be achieved by allowing the husband’s application, granting a decree of divorce by mutual consent and quashing the pending cases.
The reasoning tracks what Shilpa Sailesh settled: the Supreme Court may dissolve a marriage on irretrievable breakdown under Article 142 without remitting the parties to a family court, and may waive the statutory waiting period, where it is satisfied the marriage is beyond repair and the settlement of ancillary claims is complete. The Court here recorded both — the dead end, and the alimony paid in full.
What was ordered
The husband’s application under Article 142 was allowed and the marriage solemnised on 4 December 2016 stands dissolved.
All the pending cases enumerated in the judgment, as well as any other case of a civil or criminal nature filed between the parties, stand quashed. The parties were directed not to file any fresh cases against each other. The transfer petitions were disposed of, and the Registry directed to draw up a decree.
The sweep of the second direction is worth noticing. It covers proceedings the Court was never asked to transfer and was not otherwise seised of — including those involving family members on both sides. That reach is available under Article 142 and not otherwise, which is why applications of this kind are made to this Court rather than below.
The third direction — not to file fresh cases — is what distinguishes a settlement of this kind from a compromise in a single case. A quashing that leaves the parties free to begin again has solved nothing, and in a dispute that had already generated a charge-sheet, a domestic violence case and a list long enough to be tabulated, the prohibition is the operative relief.
The shape of it
Read as a sequence, the case shows the route a great many contested matrimonial disputes now take. Criminal and civil proceedings multiply across two cities; a transfer petition brings both sides before one Bench; mediation is attempted and fails; and the matter is then resolved not by deciding any of the underlying cases but by ending the marriage and extinguishing all of them together, on terms negotiated in court with the Bench adjusting the figure where it thinks the settlement inadequate.
The judgment is marked non-reportable and lays down nothing new. Its interest is in the mechanics — and in the ₹5 lakh the Court added to the alimony after hearing what the wife’s health required, which is the one part of the outcome that was neither party’s proposal.