A Sessions Judge’s reasons for discharging a woman’s in-laws included the claim that a dowry demand for a car was improbable because the variant sought was not the top model. The Delhi High Court has called that conjecture and rejected other remarks too, but has still upheld the discharge, holding that the allegations against the relatives were collective and not tied to any individual act.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has dismissed a wife’s petition under Article 227 against a 2012 revisional order that discharged her in-laws of the offence under Section 498A IPC and all the accused, including her husband, of the offence under Section 406 IPC, while expressing disapproval of several observations made by the Sessions Court [Poonam Tanwar v. State and Others].
Justice Madhu Jain, in a judgment delivered on October 1, 2026, held that the revisional court’s accused-wise conclusion was reasonably open on the record and did not reveal the patent illegality or perversity needed for supervisory interference.
Background of the case
The petitioner married in February 2003 and moved into her matrimonial home at Naraina, Delhi. She alleged that her husband, parents-in-law and two sisters-in-law harassed her over dowry, demanding Rs 5 lakh and a Maruti Esteem car, that she was abused and beaten, and that her husband made her withdraw money and hand over her earnings. She further alleged that one sister-in-law, then a dental student, gave her medicines during pregnancy as supplements, that treatment was withheld when complications arose, and that she miscarried on February 11, 2004. She says she was turned out on May 20, 2004 and that her stridhan was not returned. These allegations remain unproven.
The husband filed for divorce on August 19, 2004, relying on a pathological report about her health that a later AIIMS evaluation did not support; the divorce petition was dismissed in 2009. Her complaint to the Crime Against Women Cell in September 2004 led to FIR No. 775/2005 at Malviya Nagar under Sections 498A and 406 read with Section 34 IPC, after an inquiry in which the ACP recommended proceeding against the husband alone. In June 2010, the Magistrate ordered charges against all five accused. In January 2012, the Additional Sessions Judge partly allowed their revision, keeping only the Section 498A charge against the husband.
During the pendency of this petition, the husband was acquitted in December 2022 after the petitioner and her mother could not be served and her father had died. Her application challenging that acquittal was withdrawn with liberty, and the proceedings against her father-in-law, Sube Singh, abated on his death.
Collective allegations against relatives
The Court noted that cases such as Neelu Chopra v. Bharti and Kahkashan Kausar v. State of Bihar do not permit a court to disbelieve a matrimonial complaint merely because several relatives are named, but do require it to separate role-specific allegations from collective ones. The dowry demands, taunts and beatings were attributed to all five accused together, while the Rs 55,000 payment and assaults on specific dates were attributed principally to the husband.
The mother-in-law’s alleged insistence on housework after the miscarriage was unconnected to any dowry demand and, the Court said, did not by itself amount to statutory cruelty, observing that every insensitive act in a household does not qualify. The allegation about medicines was weighed against medical records describing the miscarriage as spontaneous, with no contemporaneous history of forced medication. Although the CAW Cell’s recommendation did not bind the court, it could be considered as a corroborative circumstance.
Disapproval of the Sessions Court’s reasoning
The High Court expressly rejected parts of the impugned order:
“The improbability attributed to the demand merely because the LXI variant was not the highest model of the vehicle was founded upon conjecture. Equally, the petitioner’s attempt to return to the matrimonial home could not be treated as inherently inconsistent with her allegations. The generalised observations concerning women implicating the relatives of their husbands were also unnecessary and could not constitute a lawful basis for discharge.”
Setting those reasons aside, it held that the ultimate distinction drawn between the husband and the other relatives was independently supportable and therefore not perverse.
Section 406: ‘entrusted’ is not enough
On criminal breach of trust, the Court held that the complaint’s assertion of where each category of stridhan was lying did not show how each accused acquired dominion over specific property under an obligation, nor who refused the demands for return:
“Continued presence of property in a shared matrimonial household, without material disclosing the individual entrustment and subsequent dishonest dealing, does not automatically constitute criminal breach of trust against every member of that household.”
Section 34 IPC, it added, cannot supply these missing ingredients, and charges cannot be restored in the hope that a more particularised case may emerge at trial. Relying on Garment Craft v. Prakash Chand Goel, Amit Kapoor v. Ramesh Chander and Onkar Nath Mishra v. State (NCT of Delhi) on the limits of Article 227 review and charge-stage scrutiny, the Court dismissed the petition.
Case Title: Poonam Tanwar v. State and Others [CRL.M.C. 2222/2012]
Bench: Justice Madhu Jain, Delhi High Court
Date of Judgment: October 1, 2026
For the Petitioner: Aditya Rawat and B. Karunakaran, Advocates
For the Respondents: Ajay Vikram Singh, APP, for the State; Shishir Mathur and Chhavi Gupta, Advocates, for Respondents 2 to 6