The Supreme Court has sent out a sharp reminder to High Courts: when deciding petitions to quash an FIR, don’t just read the text—read the situation.
On Thursday, the bench observed that not every FIR is born out of genuine grievance; some are weapons of retaliation. If judges ignore the backdrop, they risk letting litigation become a tool of harassment.
The ruling came after the Court examined a case from Punjab, where a wife filed an FIR alleging cruelty and dowry harassment nearly three years after leaving her husband and only a month after an Australian court granted him divorce. This timing, the judges noted, was too coincidental to ignore.
“Judicial scrutiny cannot be mechanical,” the bench remarked. “What separates adjudication from administration is the ability to apply law to facts with context. Here, the FIR was plainly a counterblast—filed after the respondent had suffered adverse orders abroad.”
The Punjab & Haryana High Court had earlier refused to intervene, saying it was “too early” to quash since the investigation was at a preliminary stage. The Supreme Court disagreed, stressing that Section 482 CrPC (now Section 528 BNSS) requires at least some consideration of whether a complaint is an abuse of process.
The judges pointed out that while detailed defence or evidence isn’t to be assessed at this stage, courts must ask why a litigant who has stayed silent for years suddenly chooses to file an FIR right after suffering an unfavorable judgment elsewhere.
Finding the FIR to be retaliatory, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal and quashed the proceedings, cautioning that High Courts must guard against becoming passive conduits for vindictive litigation.
