HC issues notice to Sheetal in domestic violence case

MUMBAI: Bombay high court on Tuesday issued a notice to Sheetal Mafatlal after her brother-in-law, Ajay Mafatlal, raised a law point about whether her lawyer could have signed a plea on her behalf before a magistrate and whether the magistrate ought to have entertained such a plea.
The plea in question is her “protest” against a closure report. Ajay Mafatlal (57) had sought the quashing of a criminal complaint lodged by Sheetal against him for cruelty under the still dreaded section 498-A of Indian Penal Code and under the Domestic Violence Act.On an assurance from the police that they would file a closure of the case, the HC allowed him to withdraw his plea in 2013. When the police did file the closure report, Sheetal’s lawyer filed “under his name and signature a protest plea, without her name and signature” said Ajay in his plea.
His lawyer, Bhavesh Parmar, argued that a protest petition could only be filed by the complainant, Sheetal, and questioned the magistrate’s order that entertained the protest plea. Ajay dragged Sheetal and her lawyer to court after a magistrate last May rejected a closure report filed last year by the police in a cruelty case filed against him by her. Calling the magistrate’s order “perverse and mechanical” and lacking any application of mind, he said the Girgaum magistrate had no powers to accept a “protest petition” filed by Sheetal’s lawyer without her name and signature.
On Monday, Sheetal also sought to intervene in a company petition before Justice S J Kathwalla where the issue of ownership of paintings, she claims are hers, is at stake. Earlier Ajay too intervened in the matter before the HC and said he had documents to show that the paintings belonged to the Mafatlal company.