Calling wife ‘stupid’, ‘useless’ not criminal cruelty: Supreme Court

New Delhi: Calling his wife “stupid” and “useless” does not, by itself, constitute criminal cruelty or intimidation, the Supreme Court has observed while quashing a dowry death case against a man whose wife died by suicide in Canada.

A bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Manmohan held that such remarks might reflect the husband's temperament but could not be given a criminal dimension serious enough to establish responsibility for his wife's death in the absence of supporting evidence.

The court set aside a January 8, 2025 order of the Bombay High Court's Aurangabad Bench, which had refused to quash the proceedings against the husband while granting relief to his parents and sister.

The couple married on January 3, 2021, and moved to Toronto in February 2022. On June 11, 2023, the woman died after jumping from the 22nd floor of their apartment building. A handwritten note found in the apartment referred to her distress over being unable to find a job and her studies, but did not blame her husband or his family.

Her father subsequently lodged an FIR alleging dowry demands, physical and mental harassment, and verbal abuse. The Canadian coroner's investigation and a 2024 Toronto Police closure report found no signs of struggle or foul play. CCTV footage showed that the husband was not at home when the incident occurred.

The Supreme Court questioned why allegations of dowry demands allegedly made in 2021 and 2022 had surfaced only after the woman's death. It also noted that the father had described the gold given at the wedding as a gift to both spouses.

Finding no credible evidence of dowry demands or specific acts of cruelty linked to the death, the court quashed the FIR and all consequential proceedings.