The Gujarat High Court has recently ruled that accusations related to the offence under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) can be pursued by a woman, provided she claims instances of harassment and cruelty that occurred while her marriage was still in effect.

The above ruling came in a petition filed under Sections 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 by complainant’s former husband and his relatives, for quashing the impugned FIR under 498(A), 294(b), 323, 114, 506(2), 494 and 114 of the IPC.

According to the FIR filed by Sonalben, her in-laws and family members subjected her to physical and mental harassment. This mistreatment escalated to the point where they would incite her husband to have her physically assaulted, she claimed. Sonalben further claimed she was coerced into taking medication to terminate her pregnancy and when she refused, her husband threatened her life and abandoned her at her maternal home.

On finding that her husband had remarried, Sonalben said she decided to file a complaint against her in-laws for emotional and physical abuse. By this time, her husband had obtained a divorce decree. So, the complainant was a divorced wife at the time of filing the impugned FIR.

In its verdict, the court highlighted that the primary charges mentioned in the impugned FIR pertain to sections 498A and 494 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
While explaining Section 498A of the IPC, the court underscored that the terms used therein, such as “the husband” and “relatives of the husband” refer to individuals who are currently “the husband” or “relatives of the husband,” either in their role as a husband or in the state of being a husband.

In this case, the petitioner No.1 was no longer the husband of the complainant, and the other petitioners were not relatives of the complainant’s husband, Court said.

Nonetheless, it noted that section 498A though uses expressions “the husband” or “relatives of the husband”, it also used the word “woman” and not “wife”. Thus it held that offence under Section 498A IPC can be maintained by a divorced wife also, provided she alleges the incident of harassment and cruelty which could have been meted out while marriage was subsisting.

Upon reviewing the FIR in this case, the court found that the complainant had not alleged instances of harassment and cruelty during the period when the marriage was intact. The FIR seems to indicate that the allegations were aimed at events occurring after the divorce, Court said.

“On reading the FIR as it is, it does not disclose essential ingredients of offence punishable u/s 498A as well as u/s 494 and other allied offence of the IPC. Thus, allowing the FIR to continue into investigation and further continue into criminal case would be humiliating to the petitioners and it would amount to abuse of process of the Court. Therefore, the proceedings are required to be quashed and set aside to meet with the ends of justice,” the court added, while allowing the petition and quashing and setting aside all consequential proceedings arising therefrom.

Case Title: Rameshbhai Danjibhai Solanki & 7 Other(S) Versus State Of Gujarat & 1 Other(S)