The Supreme Court of India has held that the persistent refusal of sexual intercourse without reasonable cause constitutes mental cruelty within the meaning of Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, and has further held that a prolonged separation of fifteen years, with no prospect of reconciliation, independently amounts to mental cruelty justifying dissolution of marriage.
The decision was delivered by a Bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Augustine George Masih on June 2, 2026, while dismissing an appeal filed by the wife against a judgment of the High Court of Rajasthan at Jaipur dated January 2, 2025, which had granted divorce in favour of the husband.
The parties had married on December 5, 2007 according to Hindu rites at Nadiyad Khera, Gujarat. Both are medical doctors employed in government service, the wife as a Gynaecologist in Gujarat and the husband in Rajasthan. No child was born from the marriage. The parties cohabited for only two to three months during the entire matrimonial period of two years, after which they lived separately. The husband filed a divorce petition in 2009 before the Family Court at Bharatpur, Rajasthan, under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act, alleging cruelty. The Family Court dismissed the petition in August 2019, finding that cruelty had not been proved. The High Court allowed the husband's appeal and granted divorce, prompting the wife to approach the Supreme Court.
The wife contended before the Supreme Court that she had never abandoned the husband and had always been willing to live with him. She argued that it was the husband who had denied her the opportunity to fulfil her conjugal duties, and that he could not be permitted to take advantage of his own wrong. She also submitted that the grounds of desertion and irretrievable breakdown of marriage had not been pleaded in the divorce petition.
Upholding the High Court's finding on cruelty, the Supreme Court noted that even during the brief period of cohabitation, the wife would sleep early, lock her room from inside and not open the door when the husband knocked, leaving him to sleep in a separate room. The wife did not deny that they slept in different rooms. Relying on the principles laid down in Samar Ghosh v. Jaya Ghosh, (2007) 4 SCC 511, the Court affirmed that unilateral refusal of sexual intercourse for a considerable period without physical incapacity or valid reason amounts to mental cruelty and is a valid ground for divorce.
On the question of desertion, the Court observed that while the statutory ground under Section 13(1)(ib) of the Hindu Marriage Act had not been formally pleaded, matrimonial disputes are seldom confined to isolated legal labels. An appellate court is entitled to examine the overall conduct of the parties and the discharge of their matrimonial obligations. The Court noted that the father-in-law's informal permission for the wife to continue working in Gujarat until a nursing home was constructed in Bharatpur did not amount to a licence to indefinitely abstain from matrimonial obligations. Since no effort to cohabit was made by either party, the Court found that there had been a shared, de facto abandonment of the matrimonial covenant.
The Court took the opportunity to elaborate upon the legal relationship between conjugal rights and conjugal duties. Marriage, it stated, cannot be reduced to a mere contractual intersection of individual rights; it is a shared covenant of emotional support, fidelity, responsibility and care, where the rights of one spouse are always tied to the duties owed to the other. Persistent withdrawal from the foundational aspects of marriage may have legal consequences when courts assess allegations of mental cruelty.
Addressing the issue of prolonged separation, the Court held that an appellate court may legitimately treat an extended period of separation, coupled with the absence of genuine reconciliation efforts, complete cessation of cohabitation and emotional alienation, as evidence of mental cruelty within the meaning of Section 13(1)(ia). Crucially, the Court clarified that such a finding by an appellate court is not an exercise of extraordinary constitutional jurisdiction under Article 142 of the Constitution of India, but a lawful and realistic application of the statutory ground of cruelty to the facts of the case.
The Court further held that it was also a fit case to invoke its powers under Article 142(1) of the Constitution to dissolve the marriage on the ground of irretrievable breakdown. It noted that the parties had been living separately for over fifteen years, mediation ordered by the Court in May 2025 had failed, no children had been born from the marriage, and both parties were financially independent. Relying on the Constitution Bench judgment in Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan, (2023) 14 SCC 231, and on Vikas Kanaujia v. Sarita, (2025) 3 SCC 748, the Court observed that continuation of the formal legal tie in such circumstances did not serve the sanctity of marriage but only perpetuated a dead relationship, creating what the Court described as sociological, psychological and mental hollowness for the parties.
Dismissing the appeal and upholding the decree of divorce, the Court made no order as to costs.
Case Title: Sonal Talpada v. Veerbhan Singh, Civil Appeal arising out of SLP (C) No. 10422 of 2025
