Husband calling wife ‘stupid’, ‘useless’ not cruelty or criminal intimidation by itself: SC

The Supreme Court has held that a husband calling his wife “stupid” and “useless” cannot, by itself, constitute an offence of cruelty or criminal intimidation, cautioning courts against giving a criminal colour to temperamental differences between spouses without specific evidence of harassment or abuse.

Quashing criminal proceedings against a man whose wife died by suicide after jumping from the 22nd floor of their apartment in Toronto, Canada, the court said that a spouse’s short temper or habit of scolding the other over trivial issues cannot automatically be equated with criminal conduct or made the basis for holding the person responsible for the suicide.

“The allegation that the appellant used to call the deceased ‘stupid’ and ‘useless,’ even if accepted prima facie, cannot to any extent qualify as an offence of cruelty or criminal intimidation,” said the court, adding that such conduct, at best, reflected on the husband’s temperament.

A bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Manmohan said that while courts must be sensitive to the pain of families who lose their daughters in such circumstances, a husband and his family cannot be made to bear the brunt of the tragedy. “We understand the plight and pain of the family members of the deceased who have gone through the tragedy of losing their daughter but the husband and the in-laws, cannot be made to bear the brunt of the same without first demonstrating any act or omission on their part that coerced the deceased to such an extent that committing suicide was the only way out,” noted the bench in its November 2 judgment.

The court was hearing an appeal by the husband, who challenged the Bombay High Court’s January 2025 order refusing to quash an FIR registered against him on allegations of dowry harassment, cruelty and physical abuse by his wife’s father. The FIR invoked Sections 304B (dowry death), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 498A (cruelty by husband or relatives) and 504 (intentional insult), read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, besides provisions of the Dowry Prohibition Act.

The couple married in January 2021, and initially lived with the husband’s family in Chandrapur in Maharashtra before moving to Toronto in February 2022. On June 11, 2023, the woman died after jumping from the 22nd floor of their residential apartment. A handwritten suicide note recovered from the apartment stated that she had been struggling to find employment for over a year and felt she was a “stupid and useless person”. It ended with her expressing a wish to donate her organs and be buried there.

The wife’s father subsequently lodged an FIR alleging that the husband and his family had demanded 15 tolas of gold before the marriage and continued to make unlawful demands thereafter. He also alleged that the husband frequently criticised his daughter for being unable to find a job in Canada, called her names, and physically assaulted her during a visit to India. The father further alleged that the husband had multiple extra-marital affairs, which could have contributed to her decision to end her life.

However, the Supreme Court noted that the Canadian coroner’s report and the Toronto Police Department’s investigation did not indicate any foul play or signs of a struggle in the apartment. The husband was not present when the woman died, and CCTV footage showed him returning to the apartment nearly half an hour after the incident.

The Toronto police closed their investigation in January 2024, while the coroner’s report attributed the death to multiple blunt impact injuries caused by the fall. It also recorded that the woman had been stressed by her studies and inability to find suitable employment.

Rejecting the father’s allegations that the gold and money exchanged between the families constituted dowry, the bench said there was no material to establish that the gifts were made pursuant to any unlawful demand. It pointed out that gold were given to both the husband and the deceased, while the alleged gifts exchanged during the first Diwali after marriage could well have been customary presents between families.

The court also questioned why no complaint or concrete action had been taken during the marriage despite the alleged dowry demands and harassment. It noted that the allegations related to 2021 and 2022, but the FIR was lodged only after the woman’s death in June 2023.

Finding no material to establish the essential ingredients of dowry death, the court said the prosecution had also failed to demonstrate any proximate act of cruelty or harassment that could establish a reasonable nexus between the alleged conduct of the husband and his wife’s suicide.

Elaborating on the legal threshold for prosecuting matrimonial cruelty, the bench said, “Under Section 498A, cruelty must involve wilful conduct of such a nature as is likely to drive a woman to suicide or cause grave injury or danger to her mental or physical health, or harassment intended to coerce her or her family into meeting an unlawful demand.”

“Similarly, mere verbal abuse, discourtesy, rudeness or insolence would not automatically attract Section 504, which requires an intentional insult of such a degree that it is likely to provoke the person insulted into breaching public peace or committing another offence,” it said.

The bench also reiterated that the inherent powers of high courts under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure must be exercised to prevent abuse of the judicial process and secure the ends of justice. While such powers should not be used to stifle legitimate prosecution, no person should be compelled to face criminal proceedings when the basic ingredients of the alleged offences are entirely absent.

Setting aside the high court’s order, the Supreme Court quashed the FIR and all consequential criminal proceedings against the man, holding that their continuation would amount to an “abuse of the process of law”.