Karnataka High Court quashes cruelty case against ‘seventh’ husband of a woman married ‘nine times’

A view of the High Court of Karnataka.

Observing that a woman had allegedly entered into nine marriages and had initiated criminal cases against all of her husbands to extort money from them soon after marriage, the High Court of Karnataka quashed a dowry harassment and cruelty case filed against her “seventh” husband.

Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while allowing a petition filed by 49-year-old Hussain, a politician, challenging the registration of a case against him under Sections 498A (cruelty against a married woman), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (insult), and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.

Stating that the “number of marriages contracted by a person cannot, by itself, constitute an indictment of character or furnish a presumption of criminal misconduct,” the court said that allegations made by the complainant women against the petitioner-man cannot be sustained in law as the allegations “are bald and omnibus, without the specific factual foundation necessary to sustain the prosecution.”

The petitioner had married Tabasum in January 2022, and she had registered a complaint against him in August 2022. Later, the petitioner came to know about her past “six” marriages and subsequently acquired documents of all those earlier marriages, criminal cases filed by her, the settlement of those cases through monetary gains, and so on, and also about her two more alleged marriages after she left him, once she had registered a complaint against him.

The court, from the documents submitted by the petitioner, noted that her first marriage was in 2004 when she was barely 16 years of age, as her personal law permitted marriage at that age, and she had her “eighth” marriage in 2023 and the “ninth” in August 2023, both of which were certified by the same Maulana.

After coming to know about her “eighth” marriage, the petitioner lodged a complaint against her, in which a charge sheet has also been filed. Additionally, her “ninth” husband had filed an affidavit before the court stating that she had threatened him with a dowry harassment and cruelty case if he failed to accept her monetary demands.

However, she had refused the allegations of nine marriages, terming some marriage certificates produced by the petitioner as “fake”, but admitted that she married four times after securing divorce, talaq or khula from earlier husbands.

“The sequence, as projected by the petitioner, is striking. One marriage follows another; matrimonial discord is followed by litigation; litigation, in several instances, is followed by settlement; and the matrimonial journey thereafter proceeds to yet another alliance,” the court said while noting the petitioner’s contention that “recurring conduct of her is not an accidental concatenation of matrimonial misfortunes, but discloses a pattern in which the criminal process is allegedly employed to secure monetary advantage.”

Finding no material against the petitioner, the court said that the continuation of criminal proceedings against the petitioner would amount to an abuse of the process of law and result in a miscarriage of justice.