Jharkhand High Court (Sujit Narayan Prasad, J., author; Sanjay Prasad, J., concurring) dismisses two cross-appeals arising from concurrent judgments dated 12.05.2023 of the Family Court, Dumka. (i) F.A. No. 175 of 2023: the husband's challenge to the dismissal of his divorce suit (O.S. No. 118 of 2019, Sections 13(1)(i-a) & (1A)(ii), Hindu Marriage Act, 1955) founded on alleged cruelty. Applying the perversity standard expounded in Arulvelu (2009) 10 SCC 206 and the cruelty jurisprudence in Dastane, Shobha Rani, V. Bhagat, Vijaykumar Ramchandra Bhate, Vishwanath Agrawal, Samar Ghosh and Joydeep Majumdar, the Court holds that cruelty must be grave and weighty conduct beyond the ordinary wear and tear of marriage, and that temperamental disharmony is not cruelty. The husband's own admissions (periodic visits to Dumka, consummation, inability to obtain a transfer to Jharkhand where alone the wife, a State employee, could serve) negatived the desertion plea, and the ground of the wife's earlier 376/493 IPC complaint (in which he was acquitted) was held beyond pleading. Finding no perversity, the appeal was dismissed. (ii) F.A. No. 223 of 2023: the husband's challenge to the restitution decree in the wife's favour (O.S. No. 135 of 2019, Section 9, Hindu Marriage Act, 1955). Relying on Suman Singh v. Sanjay Singh (2017) 4 SCC 85, the Court reaffirms that restitution follows where a spouse withdraws from the other's society without reasonable excuse; the wife's bona fides stood proved by rail tickets, a guest-house bill and an injury document (Exts. 1/1, 2, 3/1) showing she travelled to Angul to join the husband, who shut her out. The decree was sustained and the appeal dismissed. The earlier decree in O.S. No. 113 of 2016 (12.07.2018) and the deletion of its 'permanent basis' limb on 28.06.2023 in F.A. No. 510 of 2018 are noted.
