‘Classic case of misuse’: Delhi court sets aside conviction in domestic cruelty case; flags 'contradictions'

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court recently set aside the conviction of a man for subjecting his wife to cruelty, pointing out contrdictions between her allegations and conduct, and delay in lodging a complaint, reports Vineet Upadhyay.

The court called it a "classic example of misuse of...Sec 498A of IPC". Mukhtiar Singh was convicted by a magisterial court in 2023, along with his brother, under Sec 498A which deals with husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty. They were sentenced to one year in jail and fined Rs 50,000.Hearing their appeal, the court of additional sessions judge Shivali Bansal on Aug 29 said while the woman claimed ill-treatment since the day of marriage in Nov 2003, she lodged a complaint after two years.

The woman also alleged that Mukhtiar once threatened to drop their six-day-old child from a balcony. The court said no mother would risk her child's safety for the sake of marriage. The alleged incident was so grave that any female ought to have registered a complaint, considering the life risk to a six-day-old child, the judge said, calling her conduct "questionable".Advocate Pravesh Dabas appeared for the appellants.

The judge also questioned reconciliatory attempts made by the woman and her family members despite claiming her husband was not a fit person to live with, and made her life miserable.The judge said that in Indian society, it is generally held that to save marriages, women suffered atrocities from husbands and in-laws, but this was not true for all cases and could not be generalised, especially where the wife was independent and educated.The court also said the woman had made complaints in May 2007 and Aug 2008 against her husband to take "revenge" after realising that the relationship was beyond repair. It noted that the allegations of cruelty were supported by the woman's father, mother, and brother, but the court had to scrutinise the evidence of such related or interested witnesses carefully.The court underlined that, according to the law, cruelty had to be done with the intention of causing grave injury, driving the victim to commit suicide, or inflicting grave injury upon herself.In June, TOI had reported about a conviction rate of just 0.2% in criminal cases - since 2021 - related to domestic cruelty under Sec 498A. Data obtained from the city's district courts through RTI pleas reveals that 4,655, or nearly 47% of the cases were quashed by Delhi high court while 736 resulted in acquittals.