India's top court has denied an octogenarian man the right to divorce his wife of six decades, 27 years after he first applied to dissolve their marriage.

Divorce remains taboo across much of India with only one in every 100 marriages ending in dissolution, often owing to family and social pressure to sustain unhappy marriages.

Those seeking divorce must get approval from the courts, which typically only grant it if proof of cruelty, violence or undue financial demands is presented.

Nirmal Singh Panesar, 89, married in 1963 but said in filings with India's notoriously glacial criminal justice system that his relationship had broken down irretrievably in 1984.

That year his wife Paramjit Kaur Panesar, now 82, had refused to move with him to the southern city of Chennai when the Indian Air Force posted him there.