Judge Shampa Dutt (Paul) declared that the wife’s claims of being subjected to cruelty and physical assault to extract dowry lacked substantiating evidence. The Calcutta High Court invalidated a cruelty case, filed in March 2010 by a woman under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), against her husband, his mother, and sister.
According to Justice Shampa Dutt (Paul), a single judge, the complainant-wife lodged her first-degree complaint after 19 years of marriage. Judge Dutt remarked, “The written complaint contains general allegations that fail to establish a prima facie case against the accused for the alleged offenses. Given that this case was filed nearly two decades after the marriage, and no records indicate the accused’s involvement in the alleged offenses, permitting the case to proceed to trial would constitute an abuse of the legal process. Therefore, in the interest of justice, the proceedings are quashed,” as stated in the order.
As per the formal complaint filed at Dum Dum Police Station in North 24 Parganas, the petitioner had wed the complainant-wife in 1991. However, the wife claimed that she had been subjected to dowry-related torture and alleged that her husband had pressured her to either grant him a divorce or commit suicide due to her inability to conceive. She asserted that the petitioner’s motives were solely to enter into a second marriage.
In response, the husband referenced a September 2019 High Court ruling, which noted that the couple had barely spent a few days together post-marriage, with the majority of their married life being spent apart.
The September 2019 order considered both arguments and observations and highlighted that neither the prosecution nor the plaintiff had presented any evidence to substantiate the allegations of severe physical abuse. Judge Dutt concluded, “This case was filed 19 years after the couple’s marriage, and at present, there is no evidence to support the allegations made by the petitioners. Therefore, the case is dismissed.”
