In a judgement delivered on August 29, additional sessions judge Shivani Bansal set aside a 2023 judgement by magistrate
A Delhi court acquitted a man and his father in a case of cruelty against the man's wife, observing that while "females suffer atrocities from in-laws to save marriages", the same did not apply for an educated and independent woman.
In a judgement delivered on August 29, additional sessions judge Shivani Bansal set aside a 2023 judgement by magistrate, convicting the husband and his father of cruelty. Both of them moved the sessions court challenging the conviction.
The court noted, "In Indian society, it is generally known that so save marriage, females do suffer atrocities from husband and in-laws, but this is not true in all cases and cannot be generalised in every situation especially where female is independent and educated".
The court noted that the complaint in the current case was lodged in 2007, two years after the last instance of alleged cruelty. Raising further suspicion, the court observed that the woman's conduct was questionable at one particular instance, where the husband had allegedly threatened to drop their child from the balcony.
"It is possible that a wife was tolerating cruel behaviour of her husband and father-in-law but when it comes to the safety of her child, no mother would risk the same for a marriage. And that incident was so grave that any female ought to have registered a complaint, after all it was about life of a six-day-old child," the judgment read.
According to the case records, the accused husband (appellant no.1), a lecturer at a Sonipat-based college and the woman (respondent no.1), an official of the Indian Railways, got married in 2003. Both stayed at a government accommodation in Sonipat.
Subsequently, marital discord arose over the woman wanting to shift to Delhi, and the couple started living separately in 2005. After several efforts to reconcile the dispute by the woman's marital parents and relatives, the woman lodged a case with the Crime Against Women (CAW) Cell of Nanakpura Police Station in 2008 under IPC section 498A (husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty) and 406 (criminal breach of trust) against the husband, his father and mother.
While the mother died during the trial, the husband and his father were convicted by a magistrate in July 2023.
Advocate Parvesh Dabas, representing the man and his father, contended that the allegations levelled by the woman were a means to exact revenge from her in-laws and were based on conjecture.
Disagreeing with the magistrate's judgment, the sessions judge noted, "In the present case, it is clear that 'cruelty' is not enough to constitute the offence. It must be done with the intention to cause grave injury or drive the victim to commit suicide or inflict grave injury to herself".
The judge said that in the current case, the allegations levelled in the FIR did not reveal the existence of such cruelty, noting that the prosecution could not establish that the woman was subject to cruelty to meet unlawful dowry demands and that the allegations were vague and omnibus in nature.