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
- Venereal disease in a communicable form, as specified in Section 13(1)(v)
- 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. It also gives her a ground that is regularly overlooked: where a maintenance decree or order has been passed against the husband under Section 18 of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act or under the secular maintenance provision, and cohabitation has not resumed for a year or more since, that itself founds a petition for divorce.
The two grounds that need no fault at all
Section 13(1A) is the quiet route out of a dead marriage and is missed by many petitioners. Either party may seek divorce on the ground that there has been no resumption of cohabitation for one year or more after a decree of judicial separation, or no restitution of conjugal rights for one year or more after a decree of restitution. Nothing has to be proved about the other spouse's conduct; the fact of the earlier decree and the passage of a year is the whole case. A decree of restitution under Section 9 that nobody complies with therefore becomes, twelve months later, a clean ground for divorce. That is why a restitution petition is sometimes filed by a spouse who has no intention of resuming the marriage, and why a respondent should think carefully before ignoring one.
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.
Pleading a ground is not the same as naming one
The commonest defect in a contested petition drafted in a hurry is a ground asserted without particulars. "The respondent treated the petitioner with cruelty" is not a pleading; it is a conclusion. What the Family Court needs, and what your own cross-examination will be built on, is a dated narrative: what happened, on what date, where, who was present, what was said, what followed. Vague pleadings invite an application for better particulars, cost you a date, and leave you unable to lead evidence about incidents you never pleaded.
The evidence differs by ground:
- Cruelty. Medical and psychiatric records, police complaints and their outcomes, messages and emails in their original form, hospital papers, and witnesses who saw rather than heard about the conduct. The classical statement of mental cruelty in V. Bhagat v. D. Bhagat (1993) is still the reference point: conduct that causes such mental pain and suffering that it is not reasonably possible to expect the parties to live together.
- Desertion. The exact date the separation began, since two years runs backwards from the presentation of the petition, plus letters, notices and messages showing that you sought a resumption and it was refused. The statutory Explanation makes wilful neglect a form of desertion, which is how a spouse who never physically left can still be the deserter.
- Adultery. Direct evidence is rare, and courts accept circumstantial proof. But the allegation must name a person and give particulars of time and place. A loose insinuation is worse than useless, because it can itself be pleaded back at you as cruelty.
The consolidated guide to the grounds for a contested divorce in India takes each clause of Section 13 in turn with the case law under it.
Other personal laws
Other personal laws have their own schemes. The Special Marriage Act, 1954 mirrors most of these grounds for civil and inter-faith marriages, in Section 27. For Muslim women there is the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939, which sets out its own list including the husband's whereabouts being unknown, failure to maintain, imprisonment, impotence, cruelty and the option of puberty. Christians and Parsis are governed by the Indian Divorce Act, 1869 and the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936 respectively. The forum is the same in each case in Bengaluru: the Family Court, which under Section 7 of the Family Courts Act, 1984 takes the whole of the district court's matrimonial jurisdiction whatever the personal law.