Financial dominance over wife cannot qualify as ‘cruelty’, Supreme Court judgment

The Supreme Court has said that monetary and financial dominance of a man over his wife cannot qualify as cruelty, especially in the absence of any tangible mental or physical harm caused to her.

The recent judgment by a Bench headed by Justice B.V. Nagarathna, while quashing a case of dowry harassment instituted by a woman against her husband, found her allegations, including that she was forced to maintain a “pennywise” account of the household expenses in Excel sheet while he sent “lakhs” to his parents and siblings for business purposes, as a reflection of the “daily wear and tear of marriage”.

The woman had complained that she was asked to leave her job as a software consultant and stay at home as a “housewife” in the U.S., where the couple was based.

She had complained that she was made to “beg for money to meet her daily needs” as the husband had exercised “full monetary control” over her. The woman had submitted that she was pressurised to lose weight after the delivery of their child.

In the judgment authored by Justice Nagarathna, the court said the situation narrated in the case was a “mirror reflection of the Indian society where men of the households often try to dominate and take charge of the finances of the women, but criminal litigation cannot become a gateway or a tool to settle scores and pursue personal vendettas”.

Justice Nagarathna said allegations like the lack of care on the part of the husband during pregnancy and postpartum and constant taunts about her afterbirth weight, if accepted prima facie, “at best reflect poorly upon the character of the accused-appellant (husband) but cannot amount to cruelty to make him suffer through the process of litigation”.

Terming her allegations as “vague and omnibus”, the court found the woman’s submission that the husband and his family members had demanded Rs. one crore as unsubstantiated for lack of evidence or material to support the claim.

The court said allegations of cruelty and harassment could be invoked only if there was a series of offending acts which would be required to be specifically spelt out against the perpetrators to initiate criminal proceedings against them.

“Courts have to be extremely careful and cautious in dealing with complaints and must take pragmatic realities into consideration while dealing with matrimonial cases where the allegations have to be scrutinised with greater care and circumspection to prevent miscarriage of justice and abuse of process of law,” the court underscored.