Section 56 of the Indian Contract Act releases the parties when performance becomes impossible. In Satyabrata Ghose v. Mugneeram Bangur of 1954, the Supreme Court explained the word. “This much is clear that the word ‘impossible’ has not been used here in the sense of physical or literal impossibility.”
Performance can also become impossible, the Court said, when it is “impracticable and useless from the point of view of the object and purpose which the parties had in view.”