NEW DELHI: An Indian-origin Austrian citizen, Tina Khanna, separated from her husband Nitin Ahluwalia, an Australian citizen, and took their child in 2013 to Austria, where the man won the litigation for the child’s custody. In April 2016, he was granted divorce by an Australian court.As a classic example of misuse of IPC Section 498A by women, flagged many a time by the Supreme Court, Tina in May 2016 lodged a complaint with SSP, SAS Nagar, alleging dowry demands and physical and mental torture. Nitin moved Punjab and Haryana HC seeking quashing of the FIR, but his plea was rejected. He moved SC, which in Dec 2017 stayed proceedings on the FIR.Nearly a decade after the FIR was lodged, a bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Prashant Kumar Mishra has quashed the FIR and criticised the woman’s conduct.Writing the judgment and regretting the failure of mediation attempts between the parties, Justice Karol said, “We are disappointed in the lack of foresight shown by both parties, particularly when it comes to the well-acknowledged ill-effects of continued, strained and hostile relationship between the parents on a young child.” “In this case, the child was born in Sept 2012, and the parents have been in litigation from the time when she was not even a year old to the day this judgment is delivered,” he said. Tina’s counsel argued that as India was not a signatory to The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, 1980, the decree passed by the courts in Austria need not be considered by the SC.The bench took note that Tina had filed the FIR a month after the Australian court granted divorce on Nitin’s petition as the couple were separated for three years. It said the FIR appears to be a counterblast as Nitin had two orders in his favour — courts in Austria ordering Tina to bring the child back to Australia and the other by the courts in Australia accepting Nitin’s plea for divorce.SC said although Tina argued before Austrian courts better education facilities were the reason she shifted her daughter to Austria from Australia, it was found she had been living in India in the past years and did not comply with directive to return the daughter to Australia. Assessing that FIR painted a picture that was far from truth, SC said period of dowry and cruelty allegation period noted in FIR was beyond date of divorce granted by the Australian court.
