The Jharkhand High Court has granted a woman a divorce after finding that she left the matrimonial home because of cruelty rather than any intention to abandon the marriage.
Justices Sujit Narayan Prasad and Sanjay Prasad held on 9 October that desertion requires voluntary withdrawal from cohabitation with an intention to end marital life. A spouse forced to leave by the other partner’s conduct cannot be treated as the deserter.
The wife testified that her husband drank habitually, assaulted her for money and mistreated their children. The Family Court rejected cruelty partly because no formal police case had been registered. The High Court said that approach wrongly discounted matrimonial evidence and her prior police complaint.
Finding the marriage had become incapable of revival after separation since 2018, the court dissolved it. The children’s inheritance rights remain intact, and the mother may separately seek maintenance for them.