The Madras High Court has quashed a charge sheet filed by police against a 75-year-old woman charging her with subjecting her granddaughter-in-law to cruelty and warned that further prosecution in the case would amount to abuse of process of law.
Justice P N Prakash of the court's Madurai bench, allowing a petition filed by the septuagenarian woman as well as the complainant's married sister-in-law residing in Bengaluru, said "usual allegations of cruelty that are normally levelled against the family members in matrimonial cases, have been made here also".
He said even the Supreme Court felt that IPC Section 498-A (woman being subjected to cruelty by husband or his relatives) had earned "a dubious place of pride amongst the provisions that are used as weapons rather than shield by disgruntled wives".
The judge said in the present case, the sub-inspector of All Women Police Station, Madurai South, had registered a case against the grandmother and sister of the complainant's husband under IPC sections 498A, 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 506 (criminal intimidation).
The petitioners had sought quashing of the charge sheet.
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In another case booked against a family of three by All Women Police at Palayamkottai, the judge quashed the charge sheet in view of a compromise reached between them and the complainant woman.
"Considering the nature of allegations and in view of joint memo of compromise, this court is of the opinion that no useful purpose would be served in keeping the matters pending," the judge said, quashingthe entire proceedings pending on the file of the Additional Mahila Judge, Tirunelveli.
