RAVINDER KAUR Vs. GURMIT SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS petition Under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is at the instance of a wife who filed a complaint before the Judicial Magistrate 1st Class, Nabha of her husband having married a second time during her lifetime. In her complaint, which was styled Under Sections 494/34/120-B/109 of the Penal Code, she arraigned besides her husband, the alleged second wife and the suggested participants of the second marriage. The trial Magistrate, after recording her evidence, summoned the accused-respondents. A plea was raised on their behalf that the Court had no jurisdiction on the premises that the offending husband had not resided with the aggrieved spouse (the petitioner) within the jurisdiction of Nabha. That was in keeping with the language of amended Section 182 (2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which reads as follows : (2) Any offence punishable Under Section 494 or Section 495 of the Indian Penal Code (45 of 1860) may be inquired into or tried by a Court within whose local jurisdiction the offence was committed or the offender last resided with his or her spouse by the first marriage, or the wife by the first marriage has taken up permanent residence after the commission of the offence. The trial Magistrate overruled the objection but the learned Additional Sessions Judge, Patiala. on revision sustained it.

(2.) SINCE the order of the trial Magistrate had been upset by the Additional Sessions Judge, Patiala, a revision lay to this Court and not a petition Under Section 482, Code of Criminal Procedure. That is clear from the provisions of Section 397, Code of Criminal Procedure. So this petition is treated as a revision. Thus, the scope of the proceedings has become widened. There may be a difference of opinion on the evidence led on the subject as to whether the offending husband last resided with the petitioner-wife within the territorial jurisdiction of the Court at Nabha. But alternatively, the Court where the wife by the first marriage has taken up a permanent residence after the commission of the offence also has the jurisdiction. Learned Counsel for the petitioner rightly, to begin with, pressed this alternate argument by contending that the wife was residing within the territorial jurisdiction of Nabha after the commission of the offence, in her father's house, and was also working for gain within that territory. By adopting this stance, it is obvious that the first plea of jurisdiction has been abandoned and the alternate one set up. To this, the learned Counsel for the respondents has objection, by contending that on these facts it cannot be established that the petitioner-wife has taken up permanent residence after the commission of the said offence. He is sanguine that unless there is an assertion to that effect in the complaint or in the evidence, the jurisdiction as alternatively set up cannot be founded.

(3.) AS it seems to me, the spirit of Section 182 (2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure is to throw open a convenient jurisdiction to the offended spouse. Even while reading evidence for the purpose, the Courts have to lean towards that angle in fixing jurisdiction. Though it is true that the allegations in the complaint and the evidence of the wife are silent about her permanent residence within the territorial jurisdiction of the Court at Nabha, yet the Courts below could have drawn the inference from the mere incidence of her residence within jurisdiction, to be permanent residence. An absolute strict construction of the word 'permanent' in the sequence could lead to many an undesirable result and an abuse of the process of the Court. Thus, the impugned order of the Additional Sessions Judge is quashed and that of the Judicial Magistrate 1st Class supplanted (sustained?) by holding that the wife had a permanent residence, after the commission of the offence complained of, within the territorial jurisdiction of the Criminal Court at Nabha. And further that the trial Magistrate had the jurisdiction to try the offence. Ordered accordingly.