Lucknow, Aug 14 The Allahabad High Court has held that a man calling his wife a "barren woman" during a quarrel over childlessness and exchange of abuses between them would not constitute cruelty under IPC Section 498-A.
Justice Indrajeet Shukla of the high court's Lucknow bench, while allowing a petition filed by Hirendra Kushwaha, quashed criminal proceedings against him under Sections 498-A (cruelty by husband or relatives), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC and Sections 3/4 (giving or taking dowry and demanding dowry) of the Dowry Prohibition Act.
The proceedings arose from a case registered at the Ghazipur police station in Lucknow.
The court observed that the allegations, even if taken at face value, primarily reflected matrimonial discord arising from the absence of a child from the marriage.
"Mere taunts regarding childlessness, refusal to undergo medical examination, or verbal altercations arising from such domestic discord," without satisfying the essential ingredients of cruelty under Section 498-A, could not by themselves constitute the offence, the court said.
The couple married in December 2015 but had no child. The wife alleged that she was taunted over her inability to conceive and was assaulted and confined to a room during a quarrel on November 23, 2020. She also levelled allegations against her father-in-law and brother-in-law.
The magistrate summoned only the husband after the woman approached the court under Section 156(3) of the CrPC.
The high court noted that the dispute involved an "exchange of offensive and insulting remarks between the spouses against each other" and was therefore not a unilateral affair.
On the allegation that the husband called his wife a "barren woman", the court said the remark was "undoubtedly insensitive and reprehensible", but did not, in the facts of the case, fulfil the ingredients of Section 504 IPC.
Mere abusive or insulting words are insufficient to constitute the offence unless the alleged insult was intentional and intended, or known to be likely, to provoke a breach of public peace, it said.
The court also noted that the original complaint contained no allegation of a dowry demand, while such an allegation surfaced subsequently in the complainant's statement. It held that the later statement could not be used to "fill the lacunas" in the original complaint.
Finding the allegations largely omnibus and unsupported by sufficient material, the court held that continuation of the prosecution would amount to an abuse of the criminal process and quashed the proceedings against the husband.
