Dowry Death: Silence Of Family Members About Cause Of Death Would Become An Additional Link In Chain of Circumstances - Bombay HC

A division bench of Justices VK Jadhav and Shrikant Kulkarni held a deceased pregnant woman's husband and in-laws guilty of dowry death under section 304B IPC for strangulating her within two years of her marriage and eight days after they threatened to kill her in 2012.

"It is a case of dowry death as defined under section 304B of IPC. Such crimes are generally committed in complete secrecy inside the house. Nature and amount of evidence required to establish charge cannot be of same degree as required in other cases of circumstantial evidence. Silence of inmates of house about cause of death would become an additional link in chain of circumstances."

The HC upheld the husband's life imprisonment. It set aside the in-laws' acquittal under section 304B and sentenced the parents and sister to 10 years in prison.

The court found that the case had all three ingredients of 304B IPC, which include that the death should be unnatural, it should occur within seven years of marriage, and the woman should've been harassed soon before her death. With these conditions satisfied, the presumption under Section 113-B of the Indian Evidence Act comes into the picture, the bench said.

However, the accused had offered no plausible explanation of the circumstances that Sunita met that fate.

The Case

The couple was married on March 8, 2010. Sunita's family had paid for the wedding and given gold and other items in dowry at the time.

However, sometime after the marriage, Sunita's husband and sister-in-law tried burning her using kerosene in Pune, where the three had temporarily shifted for work.

Sunita's family also witnessed the harassment on several occasions, the police said. The in-laws had abused Sunita in front of her brother while asking for more gold. Just eight days before her death, the accused allegedly told Sunita's mother that they would get the husband married, and even if Sunita died, they would get a handsome amount of dowry.

At the time, her mother sensed something was wrong and tried to convince Sunita to return home. But Sunita refused, citing her pregnancy and an assurance that the situation would get better eventually.

Sunita was found dead in her house on March 3, 2012, the in-laws missing. Initially, the police registered a case of accidental death after it was claimed she died of poisoning. However, the post-mortem revealed death due to strangulation.

Arguments

The defence relied on the statements of defence witnesses - a labourer and a neighbour – who claimed that the deceased told them she was married against her will, and they saw her talking to a man on the bike on the day of the incident.

The HC discarded these statements on the ground that they had contradictory details. Moreover, the court asked, why would a woman confide in an agricultural labourer working in her field about her issues?

A third defence witness claimed that the husband was with him on the day of the incident, however, he was unable to produce any proof.

"Upon careful scrutiny of the evidence above referred, four important witnesses examined by the prosecution, it is very much clear that deceased Sunita was subjected to harassment and cruelty at the hands of her husband and in-laws to meet unlawful demand of dowry and gold soon before her death," the court observed.