A five-judge bench of the Bombay High Court on Tuesday started hearing the issue of whether the High Court can quash applications for compensation in domestic violence cases during the initial stages of the matter before a magistrate.
The issue was heard by a five-judge bench comprising Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justices Revati Mohite-Dere, Bharati Dangre, Satrang Kotwal and Somasekhar Sunderesan.
As per the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (DV Act), an aggrieved person can approach a local magistrate seeking compensation or damages. The magistrate considers the application after checking a report, if any, filed with a protection officer under the Act. The magistrate also has to issue a notice to the protection officer and any other party concerned, before hearing the application.
Single judge, Justice Sharmila Deshmukh, was considering whether such an application for compensation could be quashed and set aside by the High Court at the stage of issuing the notice.
She referred the matter to a larger bench noting that there were divergent views within the high court itself on whether such applications could be quashed by invoking the high court's powers.
Interestingly, Justice Deshmukh noted that in the two cases in which divergent views were taken, the respective benches had relied on the same Supreme Court judgment, but arrived at conflicting views.
“By adopting one of the views of the coordinate benches, there would not be any authoritative judicial pronouncement on the issue. The importance of judicial consistency cannot be undermined,” Justice Deshmukh had said while referring to the matter before a larger bench.
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