Bombay High Court: Women Can’t File Domestic Violence Case at a Place They Are Just Visiting
The Bombay High Court has made it clear that a woman cannot file a domestic violence complaint in a city where she is only a temporary visitor. The court stated that allowing such complaints could lead to misuse of the legal process.
Justice S.K. Shinde, who gave the judgment, said that if women were allowed to file complaints anywhere they visited casually, it might lead to legal abuse. “The aggrieved person may choose any location where she is a casual visitor,” he warned.
The court was hearing an appeal by a woman whose domestic violence complaint was earlier dismissed by the Metropolitan Magistrate at Bandra, Mumbai.
The woman said she got married in Hyderabad in December 1993. She claimed her husband and son had been abusing her mentally and physically. On September 4, she filed a complaint with local Hyderabad police. Later, she left her home around September 26–27 and came to Mumbai to meet her brother, who lives in the U.S.
During her stay in a hotel in Bandra, she filed two police complaints in October. She alleged that her husband and son were tracking her and had placed her under surveillance.
Just 23 days after arriving in Mumbai, she filed a domestic violence case before the magistrate. However, the High Court noted that she had not taken any legal action to protect herself, her property, or restrain her husband since 1993. The court emphasized that the city she was visiting could not be treated as the proper place to file the case.
The judgment highlights how the legal system must balance the rights of the aggrieved while preventing misuse of laws.
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