The Bombay High Court has ruled that preventing a child from meeting her mother constitutes 'cruelty' under the Indian Penal Code. The court declined to quash a First Information Report (FIR) filed against the in-laws of a woman from Jalna.

In its December 11 order, a bench of Justices Vibha Kankanwadi and Rohit Joshi at Aurangabad observed that the woman's four-year-old daughter was being kept away from her, in violation of a lower court's order.

"Keeping a young child of four years away from her mother also amounts to mental harassment, amounting to cruelty in as much as it would certainly cause grave injury to the mental health of the mother," the HC said.

The court further added that such behavior by the in-laws amounts to 'cruelty' as defined under Section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code.

"The mental harassment is continuing from day to day till date. It is a continuing wrong," the bench observed.

The court further stated that it would not quash the FIR, as this was not a case where interference was warranted. The woman’s father-in-law, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law had sought the quashing of the 2022 FIR registered against them in Jalna district, Maharashtra, for alleged cruelty, harassment, and criminal intimidation.

According to the complainant, she married in 2019 and had a daughter in 2020. However, her husband and his family began demanding money from her parents and subjected her to both physical and verbal abuse. In May 2022, she was allegedly forced out of her matrimonial home and not allowed to take her daughter with her.

The woman then filed a petition before a magistrate’s court for her daughter’s custody. In 2023, the court ordered her husband to hand over custody of the child to her. However, the order was not complied with, and the child remained with the husband, as per the woman’s statement in the high court.

The bench observed that while the child was with the husband, the applicants (her in-laws) were assisting him by concealing his whereabouts. The court remarked that those who show no respect for judicial orders are not entitled to relief.

In their petition, the in-laws denied the allegations of cruelty and harassment, claiming they had been falsely implicated in the case.