V BHAGAT Vs. MRS D BHAGAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner, Mr.Bhagat, is a lawyer of long standing. The respondent is a vice -president in the Indian Tourism and Development Corporation. They fought in marriage, and for so long and with such venom and bitterness that the Supreme Court had to intervene and dissolve their marriage. They are now fighting out of marriage. The battle now centres around the premises which once happened to be their matrimonial home. Despite the divorce, the respondent has not walked out of it, nor, it appears, she intends to. Not, at least, till she is compelled to. The petitioner seems equally determined to make her go. The battle -lines are thus clearly drawn and once again the courts are witness to the clash of the two titans with both sides betraying no signs of battle weariness.

(2.) SOON after the dissolution of the marriage, the petitioner instituted a criminal complaint against the respondent under section 448 of the Indian Penal Code. To his chagrin, if I may say so, the learned METROPOLitan Magistrate holding that there was no sufficient ground to proceed against the respondent, dismissed the complaint under section 203 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Hence this criminal revision.

(3.) FIRST , the complaint. It alleges that after the marriage in the year 1966 the complainant brought the accused into the matrimonial home at 32 Nizamuddin East, New Delhi on account of her being his wife and when on November II, 1993 the marriage was dissolved, she became a trespasser and though she was served with a legal notice dated November 30, 1993 requiring her to remove herself and her belongings, it was to no effect and that whereas the accused continues to use the former matrimonial home as her residence and to enjoy the facilities available therein including the kitchen, he is not left with even a bedroom or some place to rest or some space for his legal practice. The complaint says that the accused is thus deliberately and intentionally insulting and annoying the complainant with her acts of continuing trespass.