The Supreme Court has held that a husband calling his wife “stupid” and “useless” cannot, by itself, constitute an offence of cruelty or criminal intimidation, cautioning courts against giving a criminal colour to temperamental differences between spouses without specific evidence of harassment or abuse.
However, the Supreme Court noted that the Canadian coroner’s report and the Toronto Police Department’s investigation did not indicate any foul play or signs of a struggle in the apartment. The husband was not present when the woman died, and CCTV footage showed him returning to the apartment nearly half an hour after the incident.
Quashing criminal proceedings against a man whose wife died by suicide after jumping from the 22nd floor of their apartment in Toronto, Canada, the court said that a spouse’s short temper or habit of scolding the other over trivial issues cannot automatically be equated with criminal conduct or made the basis for holding the person responsible for the suicide. “The allegation that the appellant used to call the deceased ‘stupid’ and ‘useless,’ even if accepted prima facie, cannot to any extent qualify as an offence of cruelty or criminal intimidation,” said the court, adding that such conduct, at best, reflected on the husband’s temperament.
It ended with her expressing a wish to donate her organs and be buried there. He also alleged that the husband frequently criticised his daughter for being unable to find a job in Canada, called her names, and physically assaulted her during a visit to India. The father further alleged that the husband had multiple extra-marital affairs, which could have contributed to her decision to end her life.
The court was hearing an appeal by the husband, who challenged the Bombay High Court’s January 2025 order refusing to quash an FIR registered against him on allegations of dowry harassment, cruelty and physical abuse by his wife’s father. The FIR invoked Sections 304B (dowry death), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 498A (cruelty by husband or relatives) and 504 (intentional insult), read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, besides provisions of the Dowry Prohibition Act. The couple married in January 2021, and initially lived with the husband’s family in Chandrapur in Maharashtra before moving to Toronto in February 2022. On June 11, 2023, the woman died after jumping from the 22nd floor of their residential apartment. The wife’s father subsequently lodged an FIR alleging that the husband and his family had demanded 15 tolas of gold before the marriage and continued to make unlawful demands thereafter.
A bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Manmohan said that while courts must be sensitive to the pain of families who lose their daughters in such circumstances, a husband and his family cannot be made to bear the brunt of the tragedy. “We understand the plight and pain of the family members of the deceased who have gone through the tragedy of losing their daughter but the husband and the in-laws, cannot be made to bear the brunt of the same without first demonstrating any act or omission on their part that coerced the deceased to such an extent that committing suicide was the only way out,” noted the bench in its November 2 judgment. A handwritten suicide note recovered from the apartment stated that she had been struggling to find employment for over a year and felt she was a “stupid and useless person”.
