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Ajay Malik v. State of Uttarakhand

Criminal Appeal · 2025 INSC 118Decided 29 Jan 2025
Crl.A. No.-000441-000441 of 2025 (arising from SLP (Crl.) No. 8777 of 2022), heard together with Crl.A. No. 442/2025 (State of Uttarakhand v. Ashok Kumar)
Justice Surya Kant

Background

A young woman from a tribal, financially disadvantaged family in Chhattisgarh was brought to Delhi under false promises of work and handed over to a placement agency that sent her to work as domestic help in several cities, allegedly withholding her wages and mistreating her. She was eventually placed with Ajay Malik, a DRDO scientist in Dehradun, and when he and his family left home for a few days, she used a phone he had left with her to call the police, alleging she had been locked inside. An FIR followed against Malik, a neighbour (Ashok Kumar) who held a spare house key, and the placement agency operators. The complainant later gave sworn affidavits saying she was never confined or trafficked by Malik and wanted the case against him dropped.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found that the house had a second, unlocked exit the complainant could have used, that Malik had left her a phone to stay in contact (undercutting the confinement claim), and that her own repeated, consistent affidavits denied any wrongdoing by him, so no case of wrongful confinement, trafficking, or conspiracy was made out against Malik, and his prosecution was quashed. The Court also upheld the discharge of the neighbour Ashok Kumar, who was never named in the original FIR and whose only link was innocently holding a spare key. Separately, and using the case as a springboard, the Court noted that India still has no dedicated law protecting domestic workers despite multiple failed bills over decades, and directed the central government to constitute an expert committee to examine a legal framework for their protection.

Lesson Learnt

Courts can step in to quash a criminal case even after a chargesheet is filed if the material on record, including the complainant's own sworn statements, does not support the allegations; separately, the case highlights that India's millions of domestic workers still lack dedicated statutory protection.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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