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NEW DELHI: Time and again, courts have taken a humanitarian approach when dealing with sensitive cases. In one such case, an examination of facts revealed that a woman had falsely accused her husband of unnatural sex with their infant son , but the court, instead of prosecuting the woman for perjury, has let her off in the interest of the child’s welfare .

“She has to look after her minor child; so, in the interest of justice, I do not propose to take any criminal action against her for lodging false case, especially when her husband/accused does not want to take any action,” said additional sessions judge Ashwani Kumar Sarpal.

The woman had initially levelled the serious charge — attracting a maximum penalty of life imprisonment — against her husband, and got a complaint lodged on February 17, 2017. During her testimony, however, she turned hostile, clarifying that she had cooked up a story just so the fights between the couple could be avenged.

She also said the man had stopped living with and staying in touch with her.

It came forth that she was not an eyewitness in the case and the lies were result of her anger. The man was, as a consequence, arrested, jailed and tried for the purported heinous crime. In her cross-examination, she denied having seen or met the husband for six or seven months before the incident.

In the court’s view, the allegations were only meant to teach the man a lesson and the woman, perhaps, was liable to be prosecuted for “perjury as well as other criminal offences under the IPC”.

Shedding more light on the facts of the case, the court noted that matrimonial disputes caused the husband to be in jail for over six months. “In fact, due to anger, or in order to reform him, she lodged the wrong report, which, on the face of it, makes out a case of perjury as well as other criminal offences under IPC, but now it is admitted that both the accused and the complainant are living happily and the accused had now reformed himself and is taking care of the complainant/his wife and his child,” it said.

The woman’s age — below 18 years — was also taken into account, but the court thought it appropriate to give her a word of caution. “(The) complainant is only cautioned to be careful in future and, this time, she is spared simply by giving a warning,” the court said, while acquitting the man.

