The High Court of Karnataka has directed a 35-year-old woman to pay costs of ₹25,000 to her former husband for harassing him by filing a false case and abusing the process of law.

Justice P.S. Dinesh Kumar passed the order while allowing a petition filed by 50-year-old Faisal Ahmed Khan, a mechanical engineer hailing from Hunsur in Mysuru district, questioning the criminal proceedings initiated against him in 2012.

The court quashed the criminal proceedings initiated by Nazia Asma, a resident of Lashkar Mohalla, Mysuru, in 2012 in which she alleged that Mr. Khan and his relatives had harassed her and sought dowry.

Though the police filed a charge-sheet only against Mr. Khan, the High Court found no material against him. Observing that her statements in the complaint were full of contradictions, the court noted that she had first alleged that Mr. Khan tried to kill her by trying to hang her, and after some days had said that he tried to kill her by making her fall from a motorcycle.

Her complaint is silent on how she escaped when he tried to hang her and why she sat behind him on the motorcycle even assuming that he had tried to hang her, the court said, while pointing out several other “unbelievable and self-contradicting allegations”.

History of cases

Noting from the records that Ms. Asma had been involved in a series of cases, the court observed that “though the complaint was filed alleging commission of offence by the petitioner [Mr. Khan], it is in fact he who has suffered untold misery at the hands of the complainant [Ms. Asma]”.

“The allegations against Mr. Khan are designed to harass him,” the court observed. The High Court noted that when Ms. Asma married Mr. Khan in 2008, she was facing a petition, filed by her first husband in 2006, seeking restitution of conjugal rights, before a civil court, which had temporarily restrained her from remarrying.

She had not disclosed this aspect to Mr. Khan, and her relationship with him came to an end in August 2011 after she refused to go with him to Kuwait, where he was employed. Though he quit the job to save the marriage, she left him on the pretext of attending her sister’s engagement ceremony. Later, he got a job and left for Bahrain in February 2012.

Her complaint of domestic violence filed in 2012 against Mr. Khan was dismissed with costs by a court in Mysuru in 2016 as she was found to have married again, for the third time. Her plea filed in 2014 seeking maintenance from Mr. Khan was dismissed as she was found to have married earlier, the High Court noted, while pointing out that a court in Mysuru in October 2018 had allowed a suit filed in 2015 by Mr. Khan and declared that his marriage with Ms. Asma was “null and void”.