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Shivangi Bansal v. Sahib Bansal

Special Leave Petition (Criminal) · 2025 INSC 883Decided 22 Jul 2025
Transfer Petition (C) No. 2367 of 2023 (with connected T.P. (Crl.) Nos. 631-633/2023, SLP (Crl.) Nos. 7869/2022, 11848/2022 and 2282/2023)
Chief Justice · Justice Augustine George Masih

Background

A husband and wife married in 2015 and had a daughter in 2016, but separated in 2018 amid matrimonial discord. Over the following years the two sides filed a barrage of cases against each other and each other's family members across courts in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh: criminal complaints (including under Section 498A IPC and the Domestic Violence Act), a maintenance petition, a divorce petition, defamation and breach-of-trust complaints, and even income-tax investigation notices. The wife sought transfer of the divorce case to Hapur, UP, while the husband sought transfer of criminal cases against him from Hapur to Delhi, and both also had pending Special Leave Petitions before the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

Rather than deciding each petition separately, the Supreme Court used the parties' willingness to settle to bring total closure to the entire litigation. Exercising its extraordinary power under Article 142 of the Constitution, the Court ordered dissolution of the marriage and quashed the various pending cross-cases and complaints as part of the settlement. As a condition, the wife was directed to publish an unconditional apology (in a specified form) to the husband's family in national newspapers and on social media within three days: expressly stated not to amount to an admission of liability and never to be used against her in future proceedings. Both sides were also directed to remove prior adverse social-media posts and refrain from further disparaging statements about each other.

Lesson Learnt

The Supreme Court can use its Article 142 powers to comprehensively resolve tangled, multi-front matrimonial litigation through a negotiated settlement rather than deciding each case on its own merits, and conditions like a public apology can be crafted so they resolve disputes without being usable as evidence of guilt later.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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