Supreme Court Warns Against Misuse of Cruelty Law by Women for ‘Personal Vendetta’

Supreme Court: Not misusing laws in marriage dispute cases is a strong warning by the Supreme Court to address complaints filed by women against husbands and families concerning misuse of laws. This was reported in the newspaper as, "The court did not leave this legal provision to act as a tool to unleash personal vendetta."

The observation was made when the Supreme Court set aside a cruelty case filed under Section 498(A) of the Indian Penal Code, which Telangana High Court refused to dismiss earlier.

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This section of law was framed to protect married women from cruelty at the hands of their husbands or in-laws. The punishment specified under this law has imprisonment for 3 years or more and may carry a fine for the accused. The Supreme Court passed this verdict in favor of the man and his family, who had been charged with cruelty, lifting the High Court's order allowing to probe this case further.

The woman, in question, approached the court to file a complaint to dissolve her marriage after her husband filed an application for that. While hearing before the Supreme Court, it stressed that mere mentioning of family members against a spouse would not lead to a prosecution for having no specific evidence of their involvement.

The court went further to explain that Section 498(A) was made to protect women from the cruelty of their husbands or in-laws so that the state could immediately intervene in such matters. Increasingly too, these provisions are seen being misused with the alarming rise in matrimonial disputes and friction among couples newly married that the court took note of. This is used to exact personal vengeance by the wife upon the husband and his family, in the court's view.

The ruling of the Supreme Court tended to the need of upholding the original intent of the law and protecting it from potential abuse.

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The Supreme Court has further maintained that making amorphous and generalized allegations in cases of marital dispute may easily result in abuse of legal processes and subject the husband and the husband's family to wrongful pressure from the wife and from her family. It further observed that section 498 (A) is often invoked as a gimmick to force a husband into complying with unreasonable demands from the wife.

The Court pointed out that, consistently, it has warned against prosecuting a husband and his family in such cases unless there exists a clear prima facie case against them.

According to India Today, this is one of the cases wherein the Supreme Court held that the Telangana High Court had "committed gross error" by refusing to dismiss the case. The Court further said that the wife had instituted the case with ulterior motives which were probably to settle personal scores or grievances and such misuse of the law should not be tolerated.

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