Keeping child from mother constitutes cruelty: Bombay High Court
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The Bombay High Court has ruled that denying a mother access to her child amounts to 'cruelty' under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The decision came as the court declined to quash a First Information Report (FIR) against the in-laws of a woman from Jalna, Maharashtra.
A bench comprising Justices Vibha Kankanwadi and Rohit Joshi, in its December 11 order, noted that the woman's four-year-old daughter was being kept away from her despite a lower court ruling in her favor.
"Preventing a mother from being with her young child amounts to mental harassment, constituting cruelty as it gravely impacts the mother's mental health," the court observed. Such actions, the bench added, fall under the purview of Section 498-A of the IPC, which addresses cruelty within marriages.
The court further stated, “The mental harassment continues daily and is a persistent wrong.” Given the seriousness of the allegations, the court refused to quash the FIR, deeming it an unfit case for intervention.
The FIR, filed in 2022, accuses the woman's in-laws of cruelty, harassment, and criminal intimidation. According to the complainant, she was married in 2019 and had a daughter in 2020. However, she alleges that her husband and in-laws began demanding money from her family and subjected her to verbal and physical abuse.
In May 2022, the woman claims she was expelled from her marital home and prevented from taking her daughter with her. She subsequently approached a magistrate’s court for custody of her child. In 2023, the court ordered her husband to hand over the child, but the order was not followed, and the child remained with him.
The high court observed that while the child was with the husband, his family actively assisted him by concealing his whereabouts. The court remarked that individuals who disregard judicial orders are not entitled to seek relief.
The in-laws, however, denied the allegations of cruelty and harassment, asserting that they had been falsely implicated in the case.