New Delhi, Feb 3 A Delhi court on Tuesday declined to take cognisance of the city police's chargesheet against Uttar Pradesh's Kunda MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya for allegedly causing cruelty to his estranged wife.
Underlining that "exaggerations of the alleged past events" could not help the complainant's case, the court said criminal law cannot be invoked to revive stale and remote allegations in the absence of proximate acts constituting cruel conduct.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Ashwani Panwar was hearing the Delhi Police's plea requesting the court to take cognisance of its final report under IPC Section 498A (husband or his relative subjecting a married woman to cruelty).
The magistrate said, "...this court is not satisfied that the essential ingredients of the offence under Section 498A of the IPC are prima facie disclosed and further is of the view that the allegations levelled by the complainant are time barred as well."
He said there was no justification in taking cognisance of the alleged offence.
"A careful reading of the FIR reveals that the core allegations of physical violence and overt acts of cruelty pertain to an incident said to have occurred in the year 2015. In fact, there is no allegation of physical cruelty from the year of marriage, i.e., 1995, until the first alleged assault in the year 2015," the court said.
It said that the FIR, however, was registered at Delhi's Safdarjung Enclave police station in March 2025, after a substantial lapse of time. "The material on record further indicates that the parties had been living separately for several years before the lodging of the FIR, namely, from 2017 to 2025," the court said.
Regarding the allegations of physical violence in 2015, the court said the police report recorded the statements of two doctors, who said there was no assault, and even the medical record did not mention any diagnosis of injury by assault.
It said there was no allegation of physical cruelty between 1995 and 2015, and the present FIR was registered in 2025, when the parties had already dragged each other into various other litigations.
"While the FIR contains assertions of mental cruelty and continuous suffering, the material on record does not disclose any specific act of cruelty attributable to the accused in the period immediately preceding the registration of the FIR," the court said.
It said that the complainant made a futile effort to revive the alleged cruelty of the year 2015 by referring to the impact on her health in June 2024, but none of her medical diagnoses stated that her present medical condition had any correlation with her alleged assault in 2015.
"What the law requires is continuous cruel conduct, physical or mental and not an unconnected and unsubstantiated impact of past events. The allegations levelled by the complainant are stale and remote in point of time and should not be allowed to revive in the absence of continuous cruel conduct," the court said.
It said suffering or residual emotional distress, by itself, in the absence of accompanying acts of cruelty or harassment, could not satisfy the statutory ingredients of Section 498A of the IPC.
"The complainant's answer to the delay in filing the present complaint pertains to general assertions of fear and trauma. However, no material particular is filed in support of the explanation, and the same does not inspire the confidence of this court, and accordingly does not amount to a reasonable explanation for the inordinate delay in filing the complaint," the court said.
It said that the conversations recorded by the complainant merely revealed "apparent matrimonial discord" and the pendency of other proceedings between the complainant and the accused following a prolonged period of separation.
"None of the recording pertains to the contemporaneous period when the assault is alleged, and the conversation is a repetition of marital discord about which only the complainant was conscious that the same was being recorded," the court said.
"Criminal law cannot be invoked to revive stale and remote allegations in the absence of proximate acts constituting cruel conduct. Moreover, exaggerations of the alleged past events will not help the complainant's case," it added, declining to take cognisance.
