Hubby Can Divorce If Wife Lodges False Complaint: Supreme Court

If a woman's complaint accusing her husband and in-laws of cruelty under the dreaded Section 498A of Indian Penal Code turns out to be false, then the man is entitled to divorce, the Supreme Court has ruled.

Allowing dissolution of marriage between K Srinivas and K Sunita, the court said, “We unequivocally find that the respondent-wife had filed a false criminal complaint, and even one such complaint is sufficient to constitute matrimonial cruelty . We accordingly dissolve the marriage of the parties.“


After the wife left her matrimonial home on June 30, 1995, the husband filed a divorce suit on July 14, 1995 on the ground of cruelty as well as irretrievable breakdown of marriage.The wife retaliated by filing a criminal complaint against her husband and seven of his family members under various provisions of IPC and Dowry Prohibition Act. The husband and his family members were arrested and jailed.

A Hyderabad court on June 30, 2000, acquitted the husband and his family members of the charges leveled against them by the wife. Another family court granted divorce to the husband on December 30, 1999 on grounds of cruelty as also irretrievable breakdown of marriage. But the HC, on the woman's appeal, set aside the divorce decree.

On the woman's statement to police on the complaint lodged by her against her husband and his relatives, an apex court bench of Justices Vikramjit Sen and P C Pant said, “This is clearly indicative of the fact that the complaint was a contrived afterthought. We affirm the view of the HC that the criminal complaint was `ill advised'.“

The judgment, authored by Justice Sen, added. “In these circumstances, the HC ought to have concluded that the wife knowingly and intentionally filed a false complaint, calculated to embarrass and incarcerate the husband and seven members of his family“.