Supreme Court slaps costs on woman cop’s father for filing false cases against husband

Tribune News Service

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, April 21

The Supreme Court (SC) has ordered the father of a woman police officer in Rajasthan to shell out Rs 5 lakh for lodging false dowry demand cases under Section 498A IPC at different places against her husband to harass him.

“We deprecate this practice of state machinery being misused for ulterior motives and for causing harassment to the other side. We are thus inclined to impose cost on the respondent No.2 (woman’s father) in order to compensate the appellant,” a Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra said in its April 19 verdict.

“Without going into these statutory provisions and the case laws relied upon by the parties, we are convinced that the impugned proceedings are nothing but an abuse of the process of law,” the Bench said, allowing the husband’s appeal against the Rajasthan High Court’s March 6, 2017, order dismissing his petition seeking quashing of an FIR lodged at the women police station, Udaipur, under Sections 498A, 406, 384, 420 and 120(B) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.

Imposing costs of Rs 5 lakh on the woman police officer’s father, the top court directed him to deposit the amount with the SC’s Registrar in four weeks. It ordered that 50 per cent of the amount might be transmitted in the account of the SC Legal Services Committee and the remaining 50 per cent to the appellant husband. The appellant/husband — a Hisar-based chartered accountant — and respondent No. 3 wife (Deputy Superintendent of Police, Udaipur, at the time of marriage) came in contact with each other in June 2014 through the Internet. They got engaged on February 18, 2015, and the marriage was solemnised at Udaipur on March 21, 2015. The woman’s father filed a complaint at a Hisar police station in Haryana for alleged dowry demand under Section 498A against the appellant and his family members on October 10, 2015. After five days, another complaint was registered at Udaipur by the woman’s father against the appellant husband on the same set of allegations. He also alleged that the appellant subjected his wife to cruelty.

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