Bombay High Court gave a tight slap on the cheeks of Wokes. The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court has stated that if a married woman is asked to do household work, then it would not amount to cruelty and should not be equated to the work of a maid and would not result in the case of domestic cruelty as mentioned under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The bench consisted of Justices Vibha V Kankanwadi and Rajesh S Patil. The court further added that the woman should specify before marriage that she will not do household work if she does not want to do it.

The court was dealing with an application under section 482 of Cr.P.C. for quashing of FIR filed by a woman against her husband and his family members. The applicants were booked for offences punishable under Sections 498-A (cruelty by husband and relatives, 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult), and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC. In her complaint, the woman mentioned that she was being treated as a housemaid since she got married in December 2019. The woman had further claimed that she was mentally and physically tortured by her in-laws after she had refused to pay them Rs 4 lakh after marriage for buying a car as she claimed that her father was not well off. The court remarked “If a married lady is asked to do household work definitely for the purpose of the family, it cannot be said that it is like a maid servant. If she had no wish to do her household activities, then she ought to have told it either prior to the marriage so that the bride-groom can rethink about the marriage itself or if it is after marriage, then such problem ought to have been sorted out earlier”.

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