The Supreme Court has in a judgment advised caution to families facing marital trouble, stating that going to the police should be the “last resort”.
“Police machinery should be resorted to as a measure of last resort and that too in a very genuine case of cruelty and harassment. The Police machinery cannot be utilised for the purpose of holding the husband at ransom so that he could be squeezed by the wife at the instigation of her parents or relatives or friends,” a Bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra observed on Friday.
Justice Pardiwala, who authored the judgment, said invocation of Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (domestic cruelty) should not be mechanical in every case in which “a wife complains of harassment or ill-treatment”.
