Colleagues' Evidence, Character Aspersions and a Wife Willing to Return: Divorce Appeal Dismissed

In Surendra Kumar Thakur v. Babita Devi @ Baby Devi (First Appeal No. 23 of 2024, Neutral Citation 2026:JHHC:32222-DB, decided 3 November 2026), a Division Bench of the Jharkhand High Court — Chief Justice M.S. Sonak and Justice Manoj Prasad — dismissed a husband's appeal against the Family Court's refusal of divorce on cruelty and desertion under Sections 13(1)(i-a) and 13(1)(i-b) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. The Court characterised the husband's aspersions on the wife's character as typical gender-based stereotypes, and found the wife's stated willingness to resume cohabitation destroyed the plea of desertion.

The case in one view

Two decades of marriage, two competing narratives

The parties married on 30 April 2005 in accordance with Hindu rituals and have a son and a daughter. The husband\'s petition painted the wife as quarrelsome and “a lady of suspicious character,” alleged that he “was tortured both physically and mentally,” and pleaded that she left the matrimonial home on 15 April 2015 and never returned. The wife\'s written statement reversed the picture: she “returned to her parents\' house on account of the physical and mental torture,” dowry demands were made, aspersions of an extra-marital relationship were cast on her — and she remained “ready to restore conjugal life” if assured “due respect and honour at her matrimonial home.” A criminal case under Section 498A IPC and the dowry law had earlier been compromised between the parties.

Why cruelty was not proved

Applying the mental-cruelty framework of Samar Ghose v. Jaya Ghose, the Bench examined who actually testified for the husband: colleagues and friends, “who are not family members,” whose evidence “cannot be accepted without an element of suspicion” in a matter lived out inside the home. The minor daughter\'s testimony was discounted as prepared at her father\'s dictation. Most pointedly, the Court characterised the husband\'s attack on the wife\'s character as “typical gender-based stereotypes” — unparticularised suspicion dressed as a matrimonial ground. The conclusion followed: “Thus, we are of the considered view that no case of mental cruelty is made out.”

Why desertion was not proved

Desertion under Section 13(1)(i-b) has two limbs: the fact of separation, and animus deserendi — the intention to bring cohabitation permanently to an end — sustained for at least two years before the petition, without reasonable cause and without the petitioner\'s consent. The second limb failed. An order of 5 May 2026 recorded the wife\'s stated willingness to resume cohabitation, which the husband refused. The Court held: “Such a statement sufficiently establishes the absence of animus deserendi.” It also noted that the 2015 compromise of the criminal case “was entered into only for the purpose of settling the criminal case” and did not convert her departure — explained by torture and dowry demands — into abandonment.

The outcome and the lessons

The appeal was dismissed without costs; the interim maintenance under Section 24 HMA was affirmed with liberty to seek modification on changed circumstances; pending applications were closed. For practitioners, three lessons travel well beyond Jharkhand. First, the witness list matters: in cruelty trials, courts expect those with a window into the household, and a case proved only through colleagues invites suspicion. Second, unsubstantiated character allegations are worse than neutral — courts increasingly treat them as stereotyping that undermines the pleader\'s own case, and in some decisions as cruelty in reverse. Third, a respondent\'s recorded willingness to resume cohabitation — made before the court — is close to a complete answer to desertion; petitioners who refuse such an offer must be prepared to justify the refusal, or watch the ground dissolve.