The Supreme Court quashed an FIR under Section 498A IPC, holding that vague, generalised allegations that mechanically rope in an entire family — without particularised acts of cruelty — cannot found a criminal prosecution and risk turning a protective provision into a tool of personal vendetta.
The Supreme Court quashed a s.498A IPC and Dowry Prohibition Act prosecution against a husband's brother and unmarried sister, holding that relatives cannot be dragged into a matrimonial dispute on a casual reference to their names without specific allegations of active involvement. The decision deprecates the practice of roping in the entire household and treats it as an abuse of process.
The Supreme Court quashed cheque-dishonour proceedings against an independent non-executive director, holding that mere designation as a director does not attract Section 141 liability. Vicarious liability under the NI Act must be pleaded and proved with specific averments that the director was in charge of and responsible for the company's business.
On 12 June 2026, the Rajasthan High Court held that a former wife who continued Section 498A IPC proceedings against her ex-husband and his family after accepting ₹20 lakh as alimony and obtaining a decree of mutual divorce was abusing the process of law. The Court rejected the argument that the criminal case stood wholly independent of the settled matrimonial dispute.
The Supreme Court quashed a criminal medical-negligence prosecution against an anaesthetist, holding that an expert panel without a peer specialist is a fundamental defect, and that a nurse's failure to find the epidural space is at most civil deficiency — not the gross negligence and mens rea that Section 304-A IPC demands.
A two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court refused to quash criminal proceedings against a sonologist for deficiencies in Form F records under the PCPNDT Act, holding that blank or incomplete columns are not trivial clerical mistakes but substantive statutory violations — a springboard for the offence of female foeticide. A digest of the facts, the holding, and the statutory scheme of Sections 4(3), 5, 6 and 23.
On 13 July 2024, the Kerala High Court held that "husband" in Section 498A IPC means a married man — a woman's live-in partner, absent a legally recognised marriage, cannot be prosecuted for matrimonial cruelty, and the proceedings against him were quashed.
On 29 May 2026, a two-judge bench quashed POCSO and rape proceedings against an estranged husband's family on findings of tutored 'parrot-like' testimony, and articulated for the first time at Supreme Court level an explicit ethical duty on advocates not to assist vexatious matrimonial-dispute prosecutions.
On 6 April 2026, a three-judge bench held that the inherent powers under section 528 BNSS can be invoked to quash criminal proceedings where unimpeachable material displaces the prosecution's factual foundation; the Bhajan Lal framework carries through unbroken into the BNSS era.