HC quashes FIR filed for domestic violence by woman against elderly parents-in-law

The bench said it was necessary to clear the name, image and reputation of the petitioner mother-in-law albeit her having passed away.

A division bench of Justice Anuja Prabhudessai and Justice Nitin R Borkar passed a verdict in a plea seeking quashing of FIR registered for offences of domestic violence, cheating, criminal intimidation among others under IPC.

The complainant woman and ‘adopted son’ of petitioners were school friends and eventually they decided to get married. The woman claimed that her husband had told her before the marriage that he was the adopted son of petitioners. However, her parents came to know that a woman working for the petitioners was his biological mother. However, it was too late to cancel the wedding as invitation cards were already distributed and other arrangements were made.

The couple got engaged and married in May 2018. As per the complaint, she stayed in her matrimonial home for a month and after her husband went to Dubai for a job, she stayed with her parents. She later joined him in Dubai and would stay at her parental home whenever she would visit Mumbai.

The complainant woman, through advocate Gayatri Gokhale and Faisal Shaikh, claimed that during her stay in the matrimonial home, her mother-in-law would taunt and harass her over trivial issues and did not allow her to touch the refrigerator and gave her leftover food. It was alleged that the father-in-law would look at her with a smirk on his face and would comment that her father had not given her enough and that he should bear all her expenses.

The woman also alleged that her husband would constantly fight with her and subjected her to physical and mental cruelty during her stay in Dubai and sent her to Mumbai in 2019. She claimed the husband later persuaded her not to come to Dubai on the pretext that he had lost his job and his residence visa had expired. However, she was allegedly informed by her friend that he was living with another woman.

In November 2019, the woman and her father went to Dubai and collected some of her belongings with the help of a court official. However, she alleged that he did not return her jewellery and valuable articles including Rs 1.1 crore worth diamond jewellery given by her father and Rs 1.32 crore worth jewellery given by parents-in-law. She filed FIR against the petitioners and her husband in September, 2020.

The petitioners, through advocates Shubhada Khot and Danish Patel, however, contended that the complainant woman never resided with them since June 2018 and had falsely implicated them with malicious intent and with the sole purpose of harassing them. They also argued that during the probe, the IO wrongly sealed their lockers and frozen all their bank accounts. Therefore, they couldn’t meet their basic daily expenditure as well as medical expenses.

The bench relied on a past Supreme Court judgement which had held that ‘petty quarrels do not amount to cruelty’ under Section 498-A (domestic violence) of IPC. Allowing the plea, HC noted that despite there being “no prima facie material to show their involvement,” the petitioners were ‘dragged’ in a matrimonial dispute with ‘ulterior motive’ and freezing of their bank accounts was ‘manifestly arbitrary’ and same be de-frozen.