Indian divorce law is fault-based. You cannot simply tell the court the marriage is over; you must bring the facts within a ground the statute recognises.
The grounds under Section 13, Hindu Marriage Act
- Cruelty, physical or mental
- Desertion for a continuous period of at least two years
- Adultery, meaning voluntary sexual intercourse outside the marriage
- Conversion to another religion
- Unsoundness of mind or mental disorder of a degree that makes cohabitation unreasonable
- Virulent and incurable disease
- Renunciation of the world by entering a religious order
- Not heard of as alive for seven years or more
Section 13(2) gives a wife additional grounds, including bigamy by the husband, and certain offences, and the option of repudiating a marriage solemnised before she turned fifteen.
Cruelty, in practice
This is where most petitions live. Courts look at cumulative conduct rather than a single incident: sustained humiliation, threats, false criminal complaints, financial deprivation, prolonged refusal of conjugal relations without reason, and interference that makes ordinary married life impossible. The test is whether the conduct makes it unreasonable to expect the parties to live together.
Desertion is not simply living apart
Desertion needs three things together: separation in fact, an intention to desert, and the absence of consent or reasonable cause, continuing for two years. A spouse who leaves because of cruelty is not the deserter; that is constructive desertion by the other side.
Adultery ceased to be a criminal offence after Joseph Shine v. Union of India (2018) struck down Section 497 IPC. It remains a perfectly good civil ground for divorce. The two things are often confused.
Other personal laws have their own schemes. The Special Marriage Act, 1954 mirrors most of these grounds for civil and inter-faith marriages.