MUMBAI: Observing that mental harassment is mental injury which is never visible to the eye and has to be gathered from the facts and circumstances of each case, a sessions court upheld an order directing the 36-year-old estranged husband of a Ghatkopar woman to pay her Rs 1 lakh compensation for causing both mental and physical harassment.
The court refuted the defence that no medical evidence existed to prove the woman’s claims.
“It is not always that injuries on the body of a woman can be seen because immediately after an assault normally they do not go for medical or are not allowed to go for medical by their in-laws,” the court said.
The court further said there was ample evidence to show that the woman was subjected to mental and physical harassment at the hands of her husband and in-laws. It said the magistrate court had arrived at the proper conclusion that the woman was entitled to compensation. The unemployed woman, who told the court she was living at the mercy of her parents, was also ordered to be paid a monthly maintenance of Rs 15,000. The man moved the sessions court after a magistrate court ruled against him last year.
The woman filed a domestic violence case against her husband and father-in-law after she was repeatedly beaten and starved. She said her husband would hit her whenever she tried to get intimate with him. She suspected he was impotent. The woman told the court she got married in 2013 and finally moved out in 2015.
The court refuted the defence that the woman did not complain about an August 2013 assault incident to the police. It said no girl will complain about such solitary incidents putting her relationship with her in-laws at stake.
The accused claimed an October 2014 assault incident alleged by the woman where she was left with a bleeding nose after she tried to get intimate with him was not plausible as his mother had undergone cataract surgery at that time. The court said there was nothing on record to show his mother was in hospital then.
