IPC 498A is one of the most misused law of our country with less than 3% conviction rate. The Hon. Supreme Court of India has raised concerns about the misuse of this law over a number of times. In younger generation, where the couple has become increasingly intolerant and impatient, a married wife freely files a police complaint against her husband and his relatives under IPC 498A even during the normal wear and tear of marriage.
IPC 498A deals with cruelty of the highest order where the husband or his relatives subject wife to mental or physical torture resulting into coercing the wife to either commit suicide or cause danger to her life, limb or health. Whenever a woman is subject to such cruelty, she has the right to file a complaint in Crime Against Women (CAW) cell of the nearest police station (often known as Mahila Thana) and the husband is required to interact with police as accused.
Here are the steps you should be aware of if you are falsely accused of such cruelty and have received a call from police station when there is a false complaint or FIR against you:
Ask to notice of appearance: This is first step of the process. The wife may allege you for cruelty and lodge a complaint under Section 498A in the nearest police station. The police officer or Investigating Officer (IO) may call you and your relatives (against whom the complaint has been made) to police station. This is often a harassment as wife may file complaint in police station of a different city from where you reside and you and your relatives will be required to travel repeatedly. The main motto of this stage is mediation where police tries to resolve the issues between both husband and wife. At this stage, you may ask the police officer to issue you a notice of appearance to comply for mediation stage.
Lodging of FIR: Once the mediation stage fails, the police may convert the complaint into an FIR and lodge the same. At this stage you will be required to join the investigation as the formal investigation will be initiated. You can get a formal copy of the FIR at this stage. Often Section 498A is coupled with other sections of IPC such as IPC 406, IPC 504, IPC 506, DP Act 3/4 or more grave sections such as IPC 376, IPC 377, etc. At this stage, always insist on CrPC 41A notice before you join the investigation.
Record of statements: Once you receive the 41A notice, you and your relative who are accused, may formally give your statements to the police under CrPC 161 or CrPC 164. If you have very strong grounds to prove your innocence, you may share your evidences with police and they may even close the FIR. But, this rarely happens in reality.
Filing of chargesheet: Once the FIR is lodged, the IO is required to complete the investigation and submit the chargesheet to court within a period of 90 days. If satisfied, the IO may delete the names of the accused (relatives) as a part of the investigation and in the final chargesheet, may retain only the husband. Once the chargesheet is filed in court, the role of CAW completes.
Role of CrPC 41A notice: Acknowledging the misuse of this law and incidents of rampant arrest of accused, in the recent judgement of Arnesh Kumar vs State of Bihar, the supreme court has laid guidelines for arrest of accused. As per the apex court, it is mandatory of IO to issue CrPC 41A notice to all accused. Upon receipt of the notice, if the accused are co-operating with the investigation, the police has no reason to arrest them. CrPC 41A notice automatically acts as Anticipatory Bail and gives protection to all the accused.
When should you apply for Anticipatory Bail: As mentioned earlier, usually IPC 498A is coupled with other sections of IPC. If the sections mentioned in FIR have an imprisonment of less than 7 years, you are not required to take Anticipatory Bail (AB). Only if the sections of FIR have provision of imprisonment of more than or equal to 7 years, you may be advised to take AB.
Should you share your evidence with the police: In most cases, the police do not acquit the accused in the chargesheet. Often, the accused panics in police station by the tactics used by IO during interrogation or investigation and almost immediately show their evidences such as call recordings or WhatsApp chats. It is seen that this gives no benefit to the accused. Rather, this damages the case of accused where the evidences are then known to wife who prepares herself accordingly for the trial. It is advised to use your evidences very thoughtfully with the police.
If you wish to learn more about the laws of different IPC sections or roles and powers of police, you may get in touch with us via our all India helpline +91 9811550662.
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Nice one , grt learning