The Rajesh Sharma judgment with new guidelines to be followed in IPC 498A cases was pronounced in 2017 by a two judge bench, and it was much celebrated by some people and hailed as a path-breaking judgment, as if following of those guidelines would automatically take away all fear of arrest, roping in of all family members, or the possibility of facing criminal trial in Indian system for 5-10 years! Several guidelines/directions were issued in that judgment, and the gist of those were: constitution of Family Welfare Committees (FWC), designated IO for IPC 498A cases, possibility/promotion of culture of less …[Continue Reading]
SC 2017 guidelines on IPC 498A misuse: family welfare committees, designated IO, less arrests/more settlements, easier bail, recovery of articles, personal exemption to family members etc
Update 14/09/2018: The Rajesh Sharma judgment covered here has been reviewed by Supreme Court, and this article covers the salient points of judgment along with its full text. Update 13/10/2017: The judgment is now up for a revisit by SC (so soon!), and the reason for review is: “We can’t write law. We can only interpret the law.” SC To Revisit The Judgment By Two Judge Bench On Abuse Of Section 498A IPC [Read Petition] The women’s NGO (comprising of women advocates) which wanted a review of the judgment gave reasoning and statistics about how rural women benefit from IPC 498A and …[Continue Reading]
Allow DV complaints on females in household by removing requirement of “adult male” from definition of respondent – Supreme Court judgment
This judgment from Supreme Court in October 2016 changed PWDVA (Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act), 2005 in a fundamental way. Until this SC judgment, the DV Act allowed for complaint to be filed only against an adult male of the household, and whether other females could also be included as respondents along with adult male(s) was interpreted differently in different judgments, because the basic definition of word respondent included only adult males under Section 2(q) of the act. Basically the DV Act was created on behest of feminist lobby by roping in the beta males and virtue signalling …[Continue Reading]
Wife’s attempt to separate husband’s parents, suicide attempt, unfounded allegation of extra-marital affair considered mental cruelty on husband for divorce – Supreme court judgment
News about this Supreme Court judgment have started appearing in many newspapers with the headlines which like “forcing husband to separate from his parents” or “forcing Hindu son to separate from parents” amounts to cruelty, and so on. As it happens, news headlines may a time don’t reflect the full picture of logic inside a judgment, and sometimes news reports may even highlight a secondary part of the judgment as the main reason when in fact the judgment was based mainly on other factors. This site contains very few judgments on topic of divorce, and the reasons are explained in …[Continue Reading]
Husband’s EMI towards house to be considered in CrPC 125 Maintenance to wife – SC Judgment
This is somewhat old judgment of Supreme Court, and it brings an important consideration which was overlooked by lower courts: Which was neglecting to consider monthly EMI paid by husband towards housing loan. The order reduced maintenance amount from Rs 10,000 to Rs 5,000 p.m. While this may cause cheers to readers, it should be noted that the in-hand salary of husband is Rs 9,000 p.m, so effectively he has to now survive on Rs 4,000 p.m. Somehow the facts of the case don’t add up for me. There must be more to it than the numbers mentioned in the …[Continue Reading]
Delhi police stations (and CAW?) to be covered by CCTV as per Supreme Court order
Yesterday I had covered recent news about Supreme Court ordering all locks-ups in police stations (and prisons) to mandatorily have CCTVs installed. While searching for that news, I found that SC has already issued orders in April, 2015 that all Delhi police stations should be covered by CCTVs. And this order is not only for lock-ups inside police station, but basically seems to cover whole of PS, which should definitely cover the lobby/reception and other important areas where complainants and others meet the police officials. There are two news on the matter, and the earlier one is from Apr 23, …[Continue Reading]
Lack of legal wedding no bar for ‘live-in’ woman to claim property rights after ‘husband’s’ death
Supreme court has judged a woman cohabiting with a man for a long duration and living with him in the nature of wife is entitled to property rights after his death, like a wife would be. A bench of Justice MY Eqbal and Justice Amitava Roy said continuous cohabitation of a couple would raise the presumption of valid marriage and it would be for the opposite party to prove that they were not legally married. “It is well settled that the law presumes in favour of marriage and against concubinage, when a man and woman have cohabited continuously for a …[Continue Reading]
Supreme Court denies Delhi woman a claim on in-laws’ property
The Delhi HC judgment of Jul 2014 that a woman has no right to in-laws’ self-acquired property under Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) has got the stamp of approval of the Supreme court as per this recent news. Woman has no claim on in-laws’ property: SC In a recent order, a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Uday Umesh Lalit also put an end to years of fighting between the woman, her in-laws and her husband by granting the couple divorce. To safeguard the rights of the single mother and her two children, SC ordered the husband to provide alternate …[Continue Reading]
Husband’s adultery need not be cruelty under IPC 498A: Supreme Court
For all those scared of conviction in IPC 498A, because “my in-laws are powerful”, “my in-laws have connections”, “they have a false witnesses lined up”, and so on; this judgment may come as a relief. Or maybe not. Anyway, I am just reporting it. The key point is that conviction under IPC 498A needs mental cruelty of a kind likely to drive a wife to suicide. Husband’s illicit relationship is not always cruelty: SC The bench noted that the husband and wife had started living separately in the same house. “True, there is some evidence about the illicit relationship and …[Continue Reading]
SC says no to routine transfer petitions in favour of wives
Transfer petition is a convenient way for feminist/matriarchal wives (read: all entitlements, no accountability wives) to harass husbands by filing a legal case in their parents’ hometown or any place where they reside but which is far off from husbands’ residence. This is one thing which many men forget when they file a divorce case on wife in their own city, and later on realize that after the transfer granted by Supreme Court, now they have to travel to wife’s city to fight the divorce case they had filed! This judgment creates a first precedent against blind acceding to wives’ …[Continue Reading]
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