Case Title: Rouf Majid Naqash V. SHO P/S Women's Wing
The Jammu & Kashmir & Ladakh High Court ruled that the proceedings for divorce or restitution of conjugal rights are of civil nature whereas the purpose of lodging an FIR is to set the criminal law into motion, which is aimed at punishing the erring husband for his acts of cruelty. Therefore, merely because matrimonial litigation between the parties is going on at Sharjah, that would not be a ground to quash the impugned FIR.
The case, in brief, was that there was already a matrimonial litigation pending between the parties before the court at Sharjah UAE where the petitioner and respondent No.2 were residing separately. The petitioner argued that keeping this in view, it was not open to the respondent to lodge the impugned FIR against the petitioner as the same had been done in order to evade the outcome of the proceedings pending before the court at Sharjah.
The Complainant/ Respondent No 2 (wife) had alleged in the complaint that the petitioner had been subjecting her to continuous harassment on different occasions in connection with demands of dowry. Also, to achieve his nefarious designs, the petitioner husband had used all types of brutalities, torture, harassment etc. against the complainant/respondent No.2. She went on to allege that this attitude of the petitioner was brought to the notice of respectable persons and his relatives but there was no change in the attitude of the petitioner. It was also alleged that the petitioner had forcibly and unlawfully taken away all the ornaments and other valuable property of respondent No.2/complainant and had kept it in his illegal custody so that the same could not be used for any other purpose. It was also averred in the application that the complainant had approached the police station but there had been no response on their part which compelled her to file the application before the Court.
The Hon’ble Bench opined while hearing the entire case history on the record, that the petitioner had not appeared before the Trial Magistrate as yet and he had been declared as an absconder. It was thereby observed that, " A person who has been declared as an absconder by a court and against whom an arrest warrant has been issued is not entitled to the relief of quashing of FIR by taking recourse to Section 482 of the Cr. P. C. ”.