ILNS: The Jammu & Kashmir Sessions Court has dismissed a plea for anticipatory bail by a husband who was accused of committing assault and robbery against his wife. Principal Sessions Judge Kulgam Tahir Khurshid Raina passed this order while hearing the anticipatory bail application of Maqsood Ahmad Dar and others.
The case against the husband was that he, along with other accused, had dragged the complainant – wife and her daughter – and assaulted her.
The applicants were booked by the police for offenses of robbery, house trespass, criminal intimidation under Sections 392, 458, 354-B, and 506 IPC on the basis of a complaint lodged by the wife.
The petition said that the applicants filed an anticipatory bail application, projecting their apprehension to be arrested by the non-applicant on the basis of a false and frivolous complaint lodged by the wife of the Maqsood Ahmad Dar against them. The applicant contended that it was a case of a matrimonial dispute which was being projected by the complainant as robbery and home trespass.
The court has earlier granted the applicant interim bail subject to certain conditions. When the matter came up for hearing later, the Court said that one of the conditions based on which bail was granted was that the accused would co-operate with the investigation.
“As per C.D. File, the accused handed over this order to the I.O on April 20, 2021 means after passing of one and half month of the grant of interim bail the applicants brought the order of the Court in the notice of the Investigating Officer. It is a glaring violation of the bail condition which amounts to disrupting the fair and speedy investigation in the case”, the Court said.
The Court stated that even the material on record suggests that applicants along with other co-accused attacked the complainant lady and her daughter that too after the sunset. Even if she is the wife of Maqsood Ahmad Dar, does not give him the authority to engage other persons and attack her, assault her and drag her out of her home and then claim it to be a matrimonial dispute. Such a mode of settling the matrimonial dispute is unknown to the civilized system, but a pure beastly act highly condemnable.
The Court also said that the Anticipatory bail is not meant for those who do rank criminality against the helpless woman and then claim protection from arrest. It will be sheer misuse of the provision of the law.
“Let a message travel across the length and breadth of this society not to be the tormentors of the dignity of the women but their saviors, especially the husband to act in the most decent manner with his wife and not as a goon who forms an unlawful assembly in the wee hours with other people, lurk into the house of the wife drag her and assault her blue and black, which is on the face of the record,” it added.
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“It is said that if we have to judge the character of any society, see how better they treat their womenfolk. In this context, both on moral, social and legal touchstone the alleged criminality of the applicants-accused does not entitle them for exercising of discretion of grant of bail in their favor by the Court,” the Court observed.
The Court said that the bail application is without any merit and is accordingly dismissed.