Sending money to parents from the US and asking the wife to account for household expenses does not amount to cruelty, the Supreme Court has ruled.
The apex court said lower courts must be cautious in dealing with complaints relating to matrimonial disputes that reflect “the daily wear and tear of marriage”.
A bench of Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice R. Mahadevan passed the judgment while quashing the criminal case of dowry harassment and cruelty against a Michigan-based software engineer, Belide Swagath Kumar, challenging the refusal of Telangana High Court to set aside the case registered against him by his estranged wife, Nalla Rashmi.
“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 in order to prevent miscarriage of justice and abuse of the process of law. The allegations put forth by the complainant respondent No. 2 (Rashmi) have been considered by us.
“In our view, they reflect the daily wear and tear of marriage and can, in no way, be categorised as cruelty. The act of the accused-appellant of sending money back to his family members cannot be misconstrued in a way that leads to a criminal prosecution. The allegation that the accused-appellant forced the complainant-respondent No. 2 to maintain an Excel sheet of all the expenses, even if taken on face value, cannot come under the definition of cruelty,” Justice Nagarathna wrote.
The court added: “The monetary and financial dominance of the accused-appellant (husband), as alleged by the complainant-respondent No. 2, cannot qualify as an instance of cruelty, especially in the absence of any tangible mental or physical harm caused.
“The said situation is 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.”
The court said the other allegations of the wife — such as 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 reflected poorly upon the character of the husband, but did not amount to cruelty that would lead to litigation.