The Karnataka HC has recently acquitted a US-based doctor and his 77-year-old mother observing that the complainant-wife appears to be “too sensitive in magnifying several trivial aspects into big issues and the same ultimately resulted in the present case”.

The wife had alleged that her husband was asking her to study more to secure a job in the US, her mother-in-law was insisting that she have a child, pestered her to eat more and pressured her to learn Tamil language, among other things.
In September 2013, a magistrate court in Bengaluru had convicted the doctor and his mother under section 498-A of IPC and under Sections 3 and 4 of Dowry Prohibition Act. While the son was sentenced to one-year simple imprisonment with Rs 1 lakh as fine, the mother was sentenced to six months with Rs 10,000 fine.

On December 1, 2016, the city civil and sessions court affirmed the trial court’s judgment. Both the verdicts were then challenged before the high court through criminal revision pleas. Allowing the petitions filed by the doctor and his mother, Justice HB Prabhakara Sastry noted that the trial court and the sessions court appear to have been carried away with “the self-serving testimony” of the complainant by ignoring the fact that the statements of the complainant and prosecution witnesses were vague and lacked details of the alleged incidents.

“The trial court did not notice the fact that, even according to the complainant, if she was unable to contact her family members and could communicate with her younger sister only through e-mails, then the competent witness to speak about those details was the sister, who, for reasons best known to the prosecution, was not examined,” the judge said.

“In another e-mail dated August 11, 2008, the complainant has written to her sister that her mother-in-law is giving her too much food which she had to eat, otherwise she would have to be on fast. After stating it, the complainant has also mentioned that her mother-in-law is fighting every day and she is not able to eat properly and breathe… Every positive act of love and affection has been given a different colour and used to allege that the recipient of love and affection is being subjected to harassment or put to inconvenience,” judge Sastry has further noted.

“Small and minor likes, dislikes and differences would be common in most families… However, the complainant appears to be too sensitive in magnifying several trivial aspects into big issues which has ultimately resulted in the present case,” the judge further pointed out.