ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court (SC) has held that khula should not ordinarily be granted without the wife’s consent or clear election where she had sued on cruelty and valuable financial rights are implicated.
A three-member bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice Yahya Afridi and comprising Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan and Justice Shakeel Ahmed, announced the judgment in a matrimonial dispute.
Petitioner Mst Selab Akhtar had filed an appeal against the judgment passed by the Peshawar High Court, Mingora Bench (Dar-ul-Qaza, Swat) on September 22, 2025. The Supreme Court had heard the matter on January 6, 2026.
In its 12-page judgment, authored by Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan, the court held that khula should not ordinarily be granted without the wife’s consent or clear election where she had sued on cruelty and valuable financial rights are implicated.
However, the court held that where cruelty is not proved and marital life has manifestly collapsed, the court must afford the wife an opportunity to elect whether to pursue dismissal of her claim or accept dissolution by khula upon lawful terms, rather than compelling restoration of a relationship that has ceased to exist in substance. “In view of the foregoing, while we find no sufficient ground to disturb the concurrent findings of the courts below insofar as the petitioner’s allegations of cruelty have remained unproved, we are nevertheless of the considered opinion that the decree of khula ought not to have been granted without first affording the petitioner a conscious, informed and unequivocal election, particularly when valuable financial rights were directly involved,” says the judgment.
The court noted that the record leaves no manner of doubt that the petitioner has consistently manifested unwillingness to continue the marital bond and that the possibility of reconciliation now stands wholly exhausted.
“However, in order to align the relief granted with due process and the principles enunciated hereinabove, the impugned judgments, to the limited extent of the mode of dissolution and consequential financial adjustment, are hereby set aside,” says the judgment. The court remanded the matter to the learned family court concerned, which shall secure the statement of the petitioner and ascertain whether she elects to seek dissolution by way of khula upon lawful terms, or to insist her claim founded upon cruelty, following the consequences as have concurrently been recorded and upheld by this court without disturbing the same.
“Upon such election, a fresh decree shall be drawn strictly in accordance with law,” the court held adding that the learned family court shall conclude the said exercise expeditiously, preferably within thirty (30) days from receipt of certified copy of this judgment. In view of the foregoing, this petition is converted into an appeal and allowed in the above terms.
The court noted that in the instant case, the marriage between the parties was solemnised on 19.09.2016, whereas the suit for dissolution was instituted on 08.10.2016. Thus, the court noted that the matrimonial relationship subsisted for only a brief period of a few days before litigation commenced. “We have no cavil with the proposition that acts constituting cruelty may, depending upon their nature and gravity, occur even within a short span of cohabitation, and no inflexible rule can be laid down that cruelty must necessarily be preceded by prolonged matrimonial life,” says the judgment.
The court held that each case must turn upon its own facts and evidence. However, in the present matter, despite the allegations levelled in the plaint, the petitioner has failed to establish cruelty through material sufficient to satisfy the standard applicable to matrimonial proceedings.
“The concurrent findings of the courts below on that score do not suffer from such misreading or nonreading of evidence as would warrant interference by this court,” the court held.
The court noted that an allegation of cruelty carries social and moral stigma for the husband as well and cannot be accepted casually or upon bare assertion alone.
The court held that cruelty is no longer confined to visible physical assault alone, it extends to sustained humiliation, coercive control, emotional abuse, deprivation, indignity and conduct rendering cohabitation unsafe or intolerable. The court held that family courts must, therefore, remain cautious not to import criminal-law standards of proof into civil matrimonial litigation, lest relief meant to protect parties from oppressive domestic circumstances be defeated by unrealistic evidentiary demands. “In such a situation, the proper judicial course is neither to impose khula without consent nor to mechanically dismiss the matter while ignoring matrimonial breakdown”, says the judgment.
