Bombay HC Quashes FIR Against Wife's Mother and Brother in Bigamy-Extortion Case, Lets Prosecution Against Wife Continue

The Bombay High Court partly allowed a quashing petition, discharging the wife's mother and brother from a 2017 FIR while refusing to quash proceedings against the wife herself, who had admitted contracting a second marriage while her first was subsisting.

The Bombay High Court has partly allowed a petition seeking to quash an FIR registered at Dattawadi Police Station, Pune, in July 2017. Justice Ranjitsinh Rajabhonsale, sitting singly in the Criminal Appellate Jurisdiction, quashed the FIR and consequential chargesheet against Petitioner No. 2 (the wife's mother) and Petitioner No. 3 (the wife's brother), finding the allegations against them vague and general. The petition filed by Petitioner No. 1 — the wife, Swati Raosaheb More, also known as Swati Sunny Dimber — was dismissed outright. The court found that she had, by her own admission, entered into a second marriage while her first marriage was legally subsisting, and that her subsequent demand of Rs. 25 lakhs from her second husband could not be dressed up as a claim for alimony.

The FIR and the Charges

The FIR bearing No. 232 of 2017, dated 22 July 2017, was registered by Mrs. Shailaja Suresh Dimber, the mother-in-law of Petitioner No. 1, against Swati and her mother and brother. The offences alleged were punishable under Sections 384 (extortion), 417 (cheating), 494 and 495 (bigamy and bigamy with concealment), 504 and 506, read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code.

The prosecution's case, as set out in the FIR, was that Swati had represented herself as unmarried on the matrimonial website bharatmatrimony.com in January 2015 and again on oath before the Marriage Registrar on 30 September 2015, when she and Sunny Dimber applied to register their marriage. In fact, Swati had been married to one Bhausaheb Shinde on 23 June 2004. The couple separated in 2007, but no decree of divorce was ever obtained by Swati. Her first marriage was therefore subsisting when she married Sunny Dimber on 26 September 2015.

The complainant further alleged that Swati had used fake 10th and 12th standard marksheets, that she had travelled to Dubai without informing the family, and that on 25 August 2016 she visited Sunny Dimber's office in Australia in an inebriated state and demanded Rs. 25 lakhs, threatening to commit suicide and leave a suicide note in his name. Separately, the uncle of Petitioner No. 1 was alleged to have threatened Sunny Dimber's friend Chirag Trivedi by displaying pistol bullets and demanding that Sunny Dimber settle the matter financially.

The Petitioners' Case for Quashing

Counsel for the petitioners, Ms. Radhika Samant, argued that the FIR was a counterblast to an earlier FIR filed by Swati against Sunny Dimber and his family under Section 498-A IPC. She submitted that when read together, the two FIRs negated each other.

On the bigamy charge, Ms. Samant argued that Swati's first marriage had taken place when she was only 14 and a half years old, on 23 June 2004. Swati had separated from Bhausaheb Shinde in 2007. Counsel submitted that Swati was advised she did not need a divorce decree because she had been a minor at the time of the first marriage. She had therefore selected the option “unmarried” on the marriage registration form, being neither a widow nor a divorcee.

On the extortion charge, Ms. Samant submitted that a demand for alimony cannot be equated to extortion under Section 384 IPC, and that neither Sunny Dimber nor his family had delivered any property under threat. She also argued that the allegation of a Rs. 25 lakh demand was vague and devoid of particulars. As for the fake documents allegation, she contended that Swati had in fact travelled to Australia on those very documents, which showed they were valid.

Regarding Petitioner Nos. 2 and 3, Ms. Samant submitted that they had no specific role or overt act attributed to them in the FIR and had been unnecessarily roped in as relatives.

The Respondent's Defence of the FIR

Counsel for Respondent No. 2, Mr. Himanshu Nagarkar, submitted that the FIR disclosed genuine offences against society, supported by contemporaneous court proceedings and orders. He pointed to the fact that the Family Court at Pune, in Petition No. 1103 of 2017 filed by Sunny Dimber, had on 9 December 2022 declared the marriage between Sunny Dimber and Swati null and void ab initio under Section 11 read with Section 5(i) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, because Swati had a living spouse at the time of the second marriage. Swati had admitted in cross-examination in those proceedings that her first marriage to Bhausaheb Shinde was subsisting when she married Sunny Dimber.

Mr. Nagarkar argued that Swati's representation on bharatmatrimony.com and on the marriage registration application that she was unmarried attracted Section 420 IPC. He further submitted that the demand of Rs. 25 lakhs at Sunny Dimber's Australian workplace, accompanied by threats to ruin his life or get his visa cancelled, squarely constituted extortion under Sections 383 and 384 IPC. On the child marriage defence, he submitted that since Swati had never sought annulment of the first marriage under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, that marriage remained legally subsisting.

The Court's Reasoning

Justice Rajabhonsale set out a detailed chronology of dates and events before arriving at his conclusions. The timeline showed that Swati had filed a maintenance application against Bhausaheb Shinde in 2007 and obtained a consent order of Rs. 700 per month on 16 February 2009 — proceedings that themselves acknowledged the first marriage. She had also filed a Section 498-A complaint against Bhausaheb Shinde and his family, which ended in acquittal on 14 October 2016. Bhausaheb Shinde filed for divorce only in February 2017, and an ex-parte decree was passed on 25 September 2017 — after the second marriage had already taken place.

The court observed that Swati had, after the second marriage unravelled, filed a cascade of proceedings: an FIR under Section 498-A against Sunny Dimber and his family in September 2016; a Domestic Violence application in January 2018; a case under Sections 376, 328, 363, 384 and 506 IPC and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against Sunny Dimber and Chirag Trivedi in March 2018; and a further FIR against Chirag Trivedi in April 2018. The Domestic Violence application was dismissed on 9 March 2022.

On the central question of the extortion allegation, the court was unsparing. It held that Swati had admitted in her deposition that she was married to Bhausaheb Shinde and that the first marriage was valid and subsisting when she contracted the second. Given that admitted position, the court found her argument that the Rs. 25 lakh demand was merely a claim for alimony to be, in its words, “preposterous, totally untenable and surprising.”

The court found that the offences under Sections 384, 417, 494 and 495 IPC were prima facie made out against Petitioner No. 1. It characterised her conduct as “nothing short of blackmail and extortion” and described the multiple proceedings she had initiated as motivated, malafide, and a belated attempt to create a defence. The court held that the inherent power under Section 482 CrPC could not be exercised to quash a genuine prosecution, and that no case for quashing had been made out in favour of Petitioner No. 1.

The court relied on the Supreme Court's decision in A. Subash Babu v. State of Andhra Pradesh, reported in (2011) 7 SCC 616, which explained that Section 495 IPC is an aggravated form of bigamy under Section 494, with the aggravating circumstance being concealment of the former marriage from the second spouse. It also referred to P. Sivakumar & Ors. v. State, reported in 2023 SCC OnLine SC 1737, in the context of the effect of a marriage being declared null and void on related criminal proceedings.

On Petitioner Nos. 2 and 3, the court took a different view. It found that the FIR contained only general and vague allegations against the mother and brother — essentially that they had joined in creating a scene outside the complainant's house. There was no specific allegation against them in respect of extortion under Section 384 or cheating under Section 417. The charges under Sections 417, 494 and 495 were directed at Petitioner No. 1 and the co-accused, not at the mother and brother. The court observed that the tendency of complainants to rope in relatives on the basis of generalised allegations needed to be dealt with sternly.

Applying the categories enumerated by the Supreme Court in State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal, reported in 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335, the court held that the case of Petitioner Nos. 2 and 3 fell within Categories 1 and 3: even if the FIR allegations were taken at face value, they did not prima facie constitute any offence against the mother and brother, and the uncontroverted material did not disclose the commission of any offence by them.

Order

The petition was partly allowed. The FIR bearing No. 232 of 2017, dated 22 July 2017, registered with Dattawadi Police Station, Pune City, and the consequential chargesheet, were quashed and set aside only in respect of Petitioner Nos. 2 and 3 — the mother and brother of Swati Dimber.

The petition filed by Petitioner No. 1, Swati Raosaheb More, was dismissed. The criminal prosecution arising from FIR No. 232 of 2017 against Petitioner No. 1 and the other co-accused was directed to continue. Rule was discharged in those terms.