The Supreme Court recently quashed a cruelty case registered under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against the in-laws of a woman after noting that the criminal complaint was 'rather unique' since the husband of the woman was not made an accused even though the allegations pertained to dowry demands.
Rather both the wife and the husband had filed proceedings against the husband's parents, the Bench of Justices PS Narasimha and Pankaj Mithal noted.
"It appears that the complainant and her husband have distributed amongst themselves, the institution of civil and criminal proceedings against the appellants. While the husband institutes the civil suit, his wife, the complainant has chosen to initiate criminal proceedings. Interestingly, there is no reference of one proceeding in the other," the Court said.
Pertinently, the Court also noted that the chargesheet only reproduced the woman's allegations without any probe.
The Court reiterated that there is no bar against quashing criminal proceedings even after the filing of the charge sheet.
"None of the ingredients of Sections 498A, 323, 504, 506 read with Section 34 IPC are made out. We have no hesitation in arriving at the conclusion that if the criminal proceedings are allowed to continue against the appellants, the same will be nothing short of abuse of process of law and travesty of justice", it observed.
The Bench, therefore, set aside a Bombay High Court order that had upheld the criminal proceedings. The top court quashed the 2013 criminal complaint as well as the chargesheet in the matter.
It had earlier stayed proceedings while issuing notice in the case in May 2018.
The counsel for the appellants argued that the allegations were vague and omnibus.
The Bench noted that the criminal complaint was 'rather unique' since the husband was not made an accused despite dowry demand allegations.
The case is yet another instance of abuse of criminal process and it would not be fair or just to prolong the matter, the Bench stated.
On the chargesheet, the apex court held that,
"It simply reproduces all the wordings of the complaint. There is nothing new even after investigation, the allegations made in the FIR/complaint are exactly the allegations in the charge sheet. Even otherwise, the position of law is well entrenched. There is no prohibition against quashing of the criminal proceedings even after the charge sheet has been filed."
The appeals were, thus, allowed.
Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co. (SAM) represented the lead appellants before the Supreme Court. The Disputes Team at SAM was led by advocate Shally Bhasin (Partner), who was assisted by Prateek Gupta (Principal Associate), Prateek Yadav (Senior Associate) and Jyotsna Punshi (Associate) in the Supreme Court.
Dr. Shardul S Shroff was the Advocate-on-Record for the apellants, and the team had briefed Senior Advocates Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi and S Niranjan Reddy with Advocates Palak Arora and Siddharth Seem.
Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra with Advocates Jay Kansara, Chiranjivi Sharma, Vasu Gupta, Kushagra Raghuvanshi, Karanvir Gogia, Prudhvi Samrat and Pranaya Goyal appeared for the other appellants.
Advocates Shrirang B Varma, Siddharth Dharmadhikari, Aaditya Aniruddha Pande, Bharat Bagla, Sourav Singh, Aditya Krishna, Preet S Phanse and Adarsh Dubey appeared for the State of Maharashtra.
Senior Advocate Sanjeev Despande with Advocates Mahesh Agarwal, Ankur Saigal, S Lakshmi Iyer, Victor Das, Shashwat Singh and EC Agrawala appeared for the complainant.
[Read Judgment]