SHOBHIT KUMAR MITTAL VERSUS STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH (SUPREME COURT) (2025) 3 SCC 735
| COURT: | Supreme Court |
| JUDGES: | B.V. Nagarathna J, R. Mahadevan J. |
| LEGISLATION(S): | Section 4 of Dowry Prohibition Act |
| COUNSEL: | N. A |
| FILE: | Click here to download the file in pdf format |
| None of the offences alleged against the accused is made out. In fact, the allegations of cruelty, mental harassment and voluntarily causing hurt against the accused herein are vague and general in nature. It is neither expedient nor in the interest of justice to permit the present prosecution emanating from the FIR to continue. | |
(i) A bare perusal of the FIR shows that the allegations made by complainant/respondent No.2 are vague and omnibus. Other than claiming that the husband and his family along with the accused/appellant herein mentally harassed her with a demand for dowry, the complainant/respondent No.2 has not provided any specific details or described any particular instance of harassment. She has also not mentioned the time, date, place, or manner in which the alleged harassment occurred or the details of the nature of demand or its particulars. Therefore, the FIR lacks concrete and precise allegations. Furthermore, the complainant/respondent No.2 has failed to impress the Court as to how the alleged harassment has any proximate relationship to the said injury and nerve damage that she sustained, so as to punish her in-laws under Section 323 IPC. There is no remote or proximate act or omission attributed to the accused/appellant that implicates him or assigns him any specific role in the said FIR for the offence of hurt as defined under Section 319 IPC. Furthermore, merely stating that the accused/appellant has mentally harassed the complainant/respondent No.2 with respect to a demand for dowry does not fulfill the ingredients of Section 498A of IPC specially in absence of any cogent material or evidence on record to substantiate the said allegations. The term “cruelty” cannot be established without specific instances. The tendency of invoking the aforesaid provisions, without mentioning any specific detail, weakens the case of the prosecution and casts serious aspersions on the probability of the version of the complainant. Therefore, this Court cannot ignore the missing specifics in the FIR which is the basic premise for invoking the criminal machinery of the State. In such cases involving allegations of cruelty and harassment, there would normally be a series of offending acts, which would be required to be spelt out by the complainant against perpetrators in specific terms to initiate criminal proceedings against them. Therefore, mere general allegations of harassment without pointing out the specific details would not be sufficient to continue criminal proceedings against any person.
(ii) Courts have to be careful and cautious in dealing with complaints and must take pragmatic realities into consideration while dealing with matrimonial disputes where the allegations have to be scrutinized with great care and circumspection in order to prevent miscarriage of justice and abuse of process of law.
State of Haryana vs. Bhajan Lal, 1992 Suppl (1) SCC 335 and Dara Lakshmi Narayana vs. State of Bihar, (2025) 3 SCC 735 followed.