The Supreme Court, while quashing a case under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against a parents-in-law, observed that the high courts must examine the possibility of malafides behind the complaint while dealing with the prayers of relatives of the husband under Section 482 of the CrPC.
According to a report by LiveLaw, a bench of justices Manoj Misra and Manmohan said that in cases arising from matrimonial disputes, particularly where allegations are levelled after many years of marriage and after one party initiatives divorce proceedings against each other, the “court must be circumspect in taking the allegations at their face value.”
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The bench said that the court must examine allegations of mala fides are there, whether those allegations were levelled with an “oblique purpose”.
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“More so, while considering the prayer of the relatives of the husband”, the bench was quoted as saying.
What’s the case?
According to the report, the apex court was dealing with a case where a wife’s husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law approached the Gujarat high court seeking quashing of FIR lodged against them under Sections 498A/411 IPC. However, the high court had dismissed their petition.
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The man and his wife got married in 2005. Three days after the husband filed a divorce case, the wife lodged an FIR against him and her in-laws.
While seeking quashing of the criminal proceedings, the accused husband and his family in the high court argued that the FIR was a “counterblast” to the divorce proceedings and an abuse of the court process.
According to the LiveLaw report, the high court rejected the petition, and noted that the FIR alleged mental harassment of the complainant wife and there were allegations regarding the demand of money earned by her as salary.
The high court said that once allegations are there, whether they are true or false is to be determined during the trial.
The husband and his family members challenged the high court decision in the top court, contending that the allegations of harassment were levelled after 14 years of marriage and just three days after the divorce case summons were served.
The man in his petition alleged mala fides to the complaint, claiming that the parents were living separately, and allegations of torture were not specific.
The petitioner argued that the chargesheet had been filed, and the correctness of the allegations ought to be determined during the trial.
Supreme Court’s response
The top court bench noted that according to the complainant said there were no issues in the marriage initially. When the parents-in-law started to live with the couple, she allegedly had to suffer taunts over trivial issues.
The court noted that the wife was employed since 2008, stayed at different rented accommodations post-marriage, and allegedly used to hand over her salary to her father-in-law, who deprived her of it.
The woman alleged that the husband was having an extramarital affairs and as a result of which, he used to torture her physically and mentally and filed a divorce petition, the report added.
According to the report, the Supreme Court said that when the FIR was registered, the woman was living with her parents and there was no specific allegation of dowry demand and allegations against the parents-in-law were limited to extending of taunts and custody-related issues of children.
“In these circumstances, we will have to consider whether the impugned proceedings are vexatious and mala fide, particularly in the context of a matrimonial dispute where time and again Courts have been cautioned to be circumspect to obviate malicious prosecution of family members of the main accused”, LiveLaw quoted the bench as saying.
The court said that the woman did not give specific details about the taunts allegedly made by the parents-in-law.
“Moreover, a few taunts here and there is a part of everyday life which for happiness of the family are usually ignored”, the bench was quoted by the website as saying.