CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has quashed criminal proceedings initiated against a housewife for abetting her husband’s alleged possession of assets disproportionate to his known source of income.
The court said the housewife cannot be made an accused in the disproportionate assets case only because there are certain assets in her name. The state Vigilance had registered a disproportionate assets case against the husband as the principal accused under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
As the wife was made accused in the case, she had challenged the entire criminal proceedings initiated against her for allegedly abetting the offence committed by her husband.
While quashing the case registered against her pending before the court of the special judge, Vigilance on Wednesday, the single judge bench of Justice Sibo Sankar Mishra said, “Usually, it is the natural course that an unemployed wife is always dependent upon the will of her employed husband.”
The judge said, “The principal accused (husband) is in a position and capacity to dominate the will of the petitioner (wife). Thus, in the situation the petitioner has no scope to deny the will of her husband to participate in the purchasing of the movable or immovable property.”
The judge said immovable properties are factored into the disproportionate assets of the principal accused and the petitioner is not claiming that she has independently acquired the assets alleged to have been in her name. “Hence, the onus is on the main accused to prove the source of the income from which the assets were acquired in the name of his wife,” the judge said in the March 6 order.