False Dowry Harassment allegation made by wife can i file counter case

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n many of these instances, the husband and family are already facing multiple cases filed against them, so the question about how-to-safeguard seems to be after the fact. Maybe many people are scared and expecting the skies to fall down as the cases progress forward, so whatever may be the individual feelings, the question about how-to-safeguard still remains there, waiting to be asked, and probably any answer will not be able to satisfy them fully.

The intention behind their question is not merely to find out about how to fight the cases in court, or how to get anticipatory bail etc. Their likely intention is to find out how to nip the problem in bud – no cases should be filed, no calls by police, no fear of arrest whatsoever, no need to visit court, maybe what ‘counter-case’ they can file to safeguard etc. At least those are the hidden questions.

So let me make a humble — or not so humble if it seems so to people, because some people will always be cribbing, and at least I have an audience but these critics don’t – attempt at answering this question: “How to safeguard from false cases from wife?” .

The short answer is: You can’t. You CANNOT safeguard yourselves/your parents, and add to it possibly brother/sister, brother/sister-in-law, uncle/aunts, in some cases nephews/nieces, in rare cases the family dog (e.g. refer case of Mr Somnath Bharti’s poor dog) fully or 100% from false cases from wife.

Let me put above sentence in shorter form once again by lessening the verbiage: You CANNOT safeguard yourselves or your relatives fully or 100% from false cases from wife.

If there are any HC or SC lawyers or judges who think otherwise, we would love to hear from them. Chances are, the higher up you go in judiciary, the more flexible spines are there to be seen when it comes to giving clients advice on marital related cases. “Don’t appear to be adamant against wife” seems to be one such piece of ‘sage’ advice, as if being ‘adamant’ to go through a trial based on evidences rather than mere allegations was against principles of justice and a crime by itself! Or maybe the real reason is the the lack of experience of the advisor in having defended men and their families in marital related cases. Most of their experience seems to be in cutting deals. The practice of higher judiciary in liberal interpretation and usage of CrPC 482 in quashing matrimonial related criminal complaints in the interest of justice and equity (what else?), ensures that higher judiciary is not the place where husbands can expect to get their interests safeguarded. It will be only for those who are adamant, the compromisers will be thrown down the compromise chute, and they will emerge at the other end without their savings/property, and without any legal cases on them either, so they are probably ready to try second marriage, or whatever else in life.

The full blame can’t lie on lawyers or higher judiciary either. Indians in general are masters in cutting deals/taking the shortcut/compromises/zombie-surviving through life. Most want to find a legal loophole, or technique to gain an upper hand… the number of men filing RCR (and lawyers advising to do the same) on wife is a clear case in point: filed with intention that it’s a counter point to wife’s false allegations, but totally backfiring later because law and courts are not meant to judge based on anyone’s future stated intentions, but based on evidences and truth of past allegations – of both parties.

In Part 2 of the article series, I will cover on realistic, do-able, maybe-unpalatable-to-many techniques which can be used to mitigate or reduce the impact of possible future false cases by wife. Many of those will need to be done right from the time of choosing a marriage partner itself, and then implemented diligently with some self-discipline after marriage too. In this article, I will restrict to the legal things.

Advocate Siddhant Sharma LawRato