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It remains undisputed on record that the complaint filed by Respondent 2 has disclosed commission of non-cognizable offence by the TV Today Network.
In the present case, the appellant took out a sharp-edged weapon i.e. knife and pointing the same at the complainant, asked him to handover whatever he was carrying and threating to kill him in case he didn’t comply. The knife, was not used to actually hurt the complainant.
“Making statements such as, the wife does not wear proper clothes or was not able to cook food properly, cannot be said to be acts of grave cruelty or harassment as per the explanations given in Section 498-A of the Penal Code, 1860.”
The Court emphasised that the manner of the commission of offence, its location and the post-incident conduct of the accused raised serious concerns regarding possibility of obstruction of justice if the bail is granted to the applicant.
The present case is of year 2005, the judgment was delivered on 29-5-2006 and now it has been more than 19 years which has passed. Therefore, it will not be in the interest of the accused to remit or remand the matter to the Trial Court from the stage of recording the supplementary statement of the accused concerned under Section 313 of Criminal Procedure Code, 1973.
The husband’s friend tried to convince him that if his demands are not fulfilled then he shall not cohabit with his wife and shall send her to her paternal home.
The Court observed that even though weapons are recovered from one of the accused, it is not the prosecution’s case that those weapons were used for any terrorist activity and/or toppling the Government.
In the present case, allegations are by way of written words before the police and before the judicial authorities, thus, such imputation will amount to defamation when the case does not fall within either of the ten exceptions to Section 499.
“This is the third round of litigation. The officers dealing with the matter despite repeated orders of this Court have shown a reprehensible attitude just to stick to their opinion. It shows that they have scant regard for the orders of Constitutional Courts.”
Even if the entire allegations made against the petitioner are considered to be true in their entirety, the continuation of this criminal proceeding against the petitioner will amount to abuse of process of law.
It is submitted that though there was fighting at public place, due to that fighting, there was no disturbance to the public peace, which is an essential ingredient of Section 159 of Penal Code, 1860. Therefore, as there is no breach/disturbance to the public peace, no offence is made out.
Mere punishment per se would not constitute a remedy for an act of crime. Therefore, the idea is to reform and rehabilitate the deviant person to bring him back into the fold of society.
The suicide note has no date, creating doubt about when it was written. It neither spells out any circumstance, which can be labelled as abetment on the part of wife and her brothers, nor does it disclose any proximate reason for the suicide.
The present incident took place on 4-1-1984, and since then the proceedings have been continuing for over four decades, with the trial itself taking nearly 19 years to conclude, and the present appeal remaining pending for more than 22 years.
“To prove the offence of dowry death, it must be shown that there was cruelty and harassment within 7 years of marriage and that it was meted out for or in connection with, demand for dowry”.
The Court noted that there were repeated incidents of accused and victim, being involved in sexual intercourse. However, the victim never informed any of her family members that the accused trespassed into her house and raped her. Even when she became pregnant, she did not disclose the incident to her family members.
It was not the prosecution’s case that any demand for dowry or any valuable security or other property was made by the accused. Rather, it was an admitted case that the only demand was to arrange Rs 50,000 to meet the legal expenses for applying bail of the husband and her father-in-law, who were in judicial custody.
“Every false complaint of sexual offences not just causes immense damage to the person accused of the offence, but also creates cynicism and distrust across the society, which leads to even the genuine victims of sexual offences suffer, as society starts suspecting her truthful complaint also to be false.”
The Court stated that the charge under Section 377 of IPC could not have been framed against the husband. A ‘consensual’ oral or anal intercourse between any two adults, in private, is not a criminal offence punishable under Section 377 of IPC.
“Every case of suicide does not amount to abetment and therefore, the Court has to see whether the conduct of the accused was such that a normal person, not merely a hypersensitive one, would have been driven to suicide.”