Forcing wife out, then years of neglect is cruelty: Calcutta HC

The Calcutta High Court has upheld a divorce granted to a wife on the ground of cruelty, holding that forcing a spouse out of the matrimonial home, followed by years of total neglect and separation, amounts to cruelty under Hindu law. The ruling, reported on October 14, 2026, was given by a Division Bench of Justices Madhuresh Prasad and Partha Pratim Roy in Arup Kumar Sur v. Anandamoyee Sur. The bench dismissed the husband's challenge to the divorce decree.

Under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, a husband or wife can seek divorce only on the grounds listed in the law. Cruelty, under Section 13(1)(ia), is one of the most used grounds. The law does not define cruelty, so courts decide case by case whether conduct has made it unreasonable to expect a spouse to keep living with the other. Physical violence is the clearest example, but courts have long accepted that mental cruelty, such as humiliation, neglect or abandonment, can count as well.

This ruling is important because it treats the end of care, and not only acts of violence, as part of cruelty. The bench looked beyond any single incident to the years in which the husband showed no interest in his wife or their son.

The judgment also deals with a gap in Hindu divorce law. "Irretrievable breakdown of marriage" means a marriage that has failed so completely that there is no realistic chance of the couple living together again. The Hindu Marriage Act does not list it as a separate ground for divorce, and the Calcutta High Court said so plainly. But the bench held that where a relationship stays bitter and hostile over many years, that continuing state can itself amount to cruelty. Separately, the Supreme Court has used its special powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to dissolve marriages in fitting cases; on September 28, 2026, a bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and R. Mahadevan held that it can grant a mutual-consent divorce without the usual waiting period once the spouses settle their claims.

For families, the case is a reminder that the law sees marriage as a partnership with duties on both sides, including the duty to care for a spouse and children. A spouse who walks away from those duties cannot later argue that the marriage should be kept alive on paper.

Short-term: The divorce granted to the wife stands, and the husband's appeal fails. Family courts in West Bengal can cite this judgment when deciding cruelty claims built on long separation and neglect rather than on a single violent incident.

Long-term: The ruling adds to a body of High Court decisions that read cruelty in the light of how a marriage has actually been lived over the years. It may help women who left, or were pushed out of, their marital homes and who are later told that they "deserted" the marriage. The legal question of whether irretrievable breakdown should be a separate ground of divorce remains with Parliament.

Who is affected: Women and men in long-dead marriages governed by the Hindu Marriage Act, especially mothers raising children alone after being forced out of the marital home; lawyers and family courts handling cruelty cases; and children whose parents remain legally married long after they have stopped living as a family.

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