The Supreme Court said that small taunts by in-laws towards a wife are a part of normal family life and do not count as cruelty under Section 498A of the IPC. It also said that courts should be careful while accepting such claims, especially during divorce cases.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court dismissed criminal proceedings against the in-laws of a woman who had lodged a complaint under Section 498A (cruelty by husband and family members) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) shortly after receiving summons in her husband’s divorce petition.
A bench comprising Justices Manmohan and Manoj Misra noted the timing of the complaint and the nature of the allegations, stating,
“In matters arising from matrimonial disputes, particularly where the allegations are levelled after many years of marriage and, that too, after one party initiates divorce proceeding against the other, the Court must be circumspect in taking the allegations at their face value. Rather, it must examine, where allegations of mala fides are there, whether those allegations have been levelled with an oblique purpose. More so, while considering the prayer of the relatives of the husband.”
The couple had been married since 2005. The husband filed for divorce in May 2019, and three days after receiving the summons, the wife filed a police complaint. She alleged physical assault and mental harassment by her husband, as well as accusations against her in-laws for subjecting her to taunts and withholding her salary.
The Gujarat High Court had previously dismissed the husband’s petition to quash the FIR. The Supreme Court criticized the High Court for having “adopted an extremely pedantic approach and for not considering the broader context of the case.”
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The Court found that the complaint lacked specific details and pointed out that the complainant had been living separately and working full-time for several years prior to filing the case. Noting the vagueness of the allegations against the in-laws, the Court decided to quash the complaint against them.
The Court remarked,
“As against the parents-in-law, the allegations are only of extending taunts and of not parting with the money for managing household expenses…A few taunts here and there is a part of everyday life which for happiness of the family are usually ignored,”
It also highlighted that the complainant’s own parents and uncle had advised her to exercise patience for the sake of the family.
In this context, the Court concluded that allowing prosecution against the parents-in-law would constitute an abuse of process.
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However, the Court declined to quash the proceedings against the husband, noting that specific allegations of cruelty warranted a trial.
Consequently, the FIR and criminal proceedings against the parents-in-law were quashed, while the case against the husband will continue as per the law.
The appellant represented by Advocates Mohd Parvez Dabas, Uzmi Jameel Husain, Nadeem Qureshi, and Syed Mehdi Imam, while the respondents were represented by Advocates Prashant Bhagwati, Swati Ghildiyal, Siddhant Sharma, and Praful Bhardwaj.
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