The complainant obtained a faster divorce by promising the Family Court she would withdraw the cruelty case, then reneged once the decree was in hand. With the marriage dissolved, every financial claim settled and the complainant relocated and remarried, the High Court held that keeping the criminal trial alive served no public interest and amounted to a manifest abuse of the process of law, and quashed it.
Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court has quashed a criminal proceeding under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code against a man whose marriage had ended in a mutual-consent divorce, holding that the complainant, having given a solemn undertaking before the Family Court to withdraw the case and then reneged on it, could not keep him tethered to a trial that had become a manifest abuse of the process of law [Prince Bansal v. State of West Bengal and Another].
Justice Uday Kumar allowed the criminal revisional application under Section 482 of the CrPC, corresponding to Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, and quashed the proceeding along with the charge sheet and all consequential proceedings.
The background
The parties married in 2018 through a court marriage, followed by a social ceremony in 2019. The marriage broke down within a short period; after the couple moved to a rented apartment in Delhi and their relationship deteriorated, they permanently separated in March 2020. The complainant then filed an application under Section 156(3) of the CrPC before a Bidhannagar court, pursuant to which a case under Section 498A was registered at the Lake Town police station in November 2020, and a charge sheet followed.
After more than three years of separation, the parties decided to formally close the matter. They jointly approached the Family Court at Dwarka, Delhi, for a divorce by mutual consent under Section 13-B of the Hindu Marriage Act, declaring in their joint statements that they had amicably resolved all claims relating to maintenance, dowry, permanent alimony and stridhan. Crucially, the complainant gave a binding undertaking, recorded in the First and Second Motion joint statements, that she would withdraw the pending criminal case immediately upon the mutual-consent divorce being allowed.
On the strength of those statements, the Family Court waived the statutory six-month cooling-off period, relying on the Supreme Court’s decisions in Amardeep Singh v. Harveen Kaur and Amit Kumar v. Suman Beniwal, and dissolved the marriage in April 2023. The complainant subsequently relocated and remarried, but did not appear before the Bidhannagar court to withdraw the criminal case, leaving the former husband facing trial in Kolkata.
The questions framed
The Court framed the controversy around three questions: whether an amicable settlement and a mutual-consent divorce are a sufficient ground to quash a Section 498A proceeding; what weight attaches to a solemn undertaking given before a Family Court to withdraw criminal litigation when the party later reneges; and whether continuing the proceeding, where the marital bond is completely severed, would be an abuse of process.
The complainant did not enter representation at the hearing, though she was noted to have relied on a recent Supreme Court decision in support of her stand. The State submitted that although a charge sheet had been filed on a prima facie case, the legal consequence of a subsequent settlement and undertaking on a non-compoundable offence fell within the discretionary purview of the Court’s inherent powers.
What the Court held
The Court answered all three questions in favour of quashing. Section 498A is non-compoundable, so the parties cannot simply compromise their way out of it; but that, the Court held, does not disable the High Court’s inherent power under Section 482 to quash a matrimonial-cruelty proceeding once the dispute has genuinely ended. Drawing on the Supreme Court’s decisions in B.S. Joshi v. State of Haryana and Gian Singh v. State of Punjab, it reasoned that a criminal trial arising from a matrimonial dispute loses its social utility where the parties have settled and moved on, and that keeping it alive in such circumstances is not the enforcement of criminal justice but an oppressive exercise in futility.
On the undertaking, the Court was pointed. The complainant had obtained the benefit of an accelerated divorce, with the cooling-off period waived, on the strength of her promise to withdraw the criminal case; having reaped that benefit she could not resile from the promise. The Court held:
“The primary complainant having walked out of the marriage, obtained a valid decree of divorce, and subsequently resiled from her solemn undertaking given before the Dwarka Family Court to withdraw the criminal proceedings, leaves no shadow of a doubt that the further prosecution of the petitioner operates solely as an instrument of harassment.”
Continuing the proceeding, the Court concluded, would serve no public interest, advance no societal objective, and punish a man whose marriage had already been dissolved with the full consent of the complainant. It accordingly quashed the case, the charge sheet and all consequential proceedings.
Why it matters
The judgment sits on a well-worn but still-contested line of authority about quashing non-compoundable matrimonial offences after settlement. Section 498A cannot be compounded by the parties, which is why a settlement does not automatically end the case; but B.S. Joshi and Gian Singh established that the High Court’s inherent power is wider than the compounding provisions, and can be used to quash where the offence is essentially private and matrimonial and the parties have genuinely resolved matters. This order is a straightforward application of that principle to a marriage that has been dissolved with all claims settled.
What gives it a sharper edge is the reneged undertaking. The complainant did not merely settle; she obtained a concrete procedural benefit, the waiver of the cooling-off period and an accelerated decree, in exchange for a recorded promise to withdraw the criminal case, and then kept the case going. The Court treated that as decisive: a person who secures the fruits of a settlement on the faith of an undertaking cannot then repudiate the undertaking and use the criminal process as a residual weapon. That reasoning is likely to be cited whenever a spouse resiles from a Family Court undertaking after a consent divorce, and it gives the accused in such cases a clear route to Section 482 relief.
A necessary caveat runs the other way. Quashing here turned on a genuine, completed settlement, a dissolved marriage, settled claims, and a broken undertaking; it is not authority that a 498A case can be quashed merely because a marriage has failed, and courts have repeatedly refused to quash where the allegations are serious and unresolved or where a settlement is contested or coerced. The order also records nothing on whether the original allegations were true; it holds only that, on these facts, the continuation of the prosecution had become an abuse of process. The distinction between a settled matrimonial dispute and a live one remains the thing that decides these applications.
Case Title: Prince Bansal v. State of West Bengal and Another [C.R.R. 2063 of 2024]
Bench: Justice Uday Kumar, High Court at Calcutta (Criminal Revisional Jurisdiction, Appellate Side)
Reserved on: September 1, 2026 | Pronounced on: September 14, 2026
Appearances: Advocates Abhay Singh, Abhimanyu Banerjee and Abdul Noorman for the petitioner. Advocate Priti Kar Bagchi for the State.
Status: Criminal revisional application allowed. Section 498A proceeding, charge sheet and all consequential proceedings quashed.