A SUPREME Court bench turned to personal emails exchanged between a couple to decide whether the wife had been subjected to cruelty as alleged by her.

The case was decided in favour of the husband after the court noted that there was no reference to cruelty in the emails exchanged between them and the charge was made by the wife for the first time when she approached court.

A bench comprising Justice S. B. Sinha and Justice Cyriac Joseph decided to scrutinize the emails exchanged between the two parties after it found it difficult to decide the matter in view of a number of allegations and counter- allegations which were mostly personal in nature.

After going through a number of emails sent by and to the husband and wife, Justice Sinha said no offence under Section 498A of the IPC was made out against the husband and others in his family.

The family had a house in South Delhi but the husband lived in Congo and managed the family business of export and import.

Ankita ( name changed) got married to Akash, a divorcee, in January 2004 but the relationship turned sour within a few months and she finally left the matrimonial home in June 2004.

Ankita, thereafter, filed the criminal complaint against her husband and inlaws and even claimed maintenance of Rs 2 lakh per month.

The husband and in- laws approached Supreme Court after the Delhi High Court refused to quash criminal proceedings under Section 498A for subjecting Ankita to cruelty.

Justice Sinha said a number of emails were exchanged between Ankita and Akash before she finally filed the criminal case in September 2004.

In her petition, she had alleged that the family had subjected her to cruelty but there was no reference to any cruel treatment in the emails, he pointed out.

Justice Sinha specifically noted down some relevant emails in the judgment to justify the inference drawn by the court.

“ There are many more emails exchanged between the couple as also their parents. However, in none of them any allegation with regard to cruelty or breach of trust had been made.” “ Such allegations are made for the first time in the complaint petition as also in the application for grant of maintenance,” Justice Sinha said.

Among other things, she alleged that her mother- in- law threatened that her son may be divorced for the second time.

In an interesting comment, Justice Sinha said this could not bring out the offence under Section 498A. Ankita, who had been granted maintenance of Rs 50,000 against Rs 2 lakh demanded by her, had levelled a number of allegations against her in- laws but these were not reflected in the emails exchanged earlier.

With the relationship deteriorating, Akash sent an email to Ankita in June expressing hope that everything would be fine.

“ My love bubbly… Don’t worry everything will be fine,” he wrote, in an intimate personal mail to her.

However, in a subsequent communication, he indicated that he had given up hope.

“ I have given a lot of thought to our situation and as you told me many times before and yesterday also, that may be it is better that we split, I think that yes it is better to do so,” he said.

The communications started reflecting on the deteriorating relationship but there was hardly any talk about the cruel treatment meted out to Ankita. On August 14, 2004, Akash wrote to his father- in- law stating that it was difficult for him to live with her.

“ I have never written nasty emails to your daughter. On the contrary, I always respected her and sent her lovely and sometimes erotic emails to light up our love life. But her nagging and lies that she has kept on telling you have made it difficult for me to try to live with a person like her,” he said.

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