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Dowry prohibition laws: misuse of

‘Dowry law can’t be tool to harass’

The Times of India

New Delhi: A court here has observed that dowry prohibition law cannot be allowed to become a tool for harassment. Granting relief to a man, who was booked in a dowry harassment case by his wife, the court ordered investigation against the complainant for filing a false case.

The man's wife in July 2012 filed an FIR againsthim in a south Delhi police station, alleging that he demanded dowry and subjected her to cruelty, which resulted in her miscarriage. Police investigated the complaint and filed a cancellation report, giving a clean chit to the accused.

Metropolitan Magistrate Ms Shivani Chauhan, accepting the cancellation report of Delhi Police, said, "Under no circumstances can it be permitted to become a tool for harassment of innocent persons."

During the investigation it was revealed that it was the woman's second marriage and there was no evidence of dissolution of the first. The woman alleged cruelty by the man which had resulted in her miscarriage. But the court noted that the investigation report showed she had voluntarily got the medical termination of her pregnancy. AGENCIES

Surpeme court on the misuse of the dowry law

Stop automatic arrests: SC

SC: Dowry law misused, stop automatic arrests

Dhananjay Mahapatra New Delhi: TNN

The Times of India Jul 03 2014

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said women were increasingly using the anti-dowry law to harass in-laws and restrained police from mechanically arresting the husband and his relatives on the mere lodging of a complaint under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code.

Citing very low conviction rate in such cases, it directed state governments to instruct police “not to automatically arrest when a case under Section 498A of IPC is registered but to satisfy themselves about the necessity for arrest under the parameters (check list) provided under Section 41 of Criminal Procedure Code”. Section 41 lays down a nine-point check list for police to weigh the need to arrest after examining the conduct of the accused, including possibility of absconding.

If police arrested the accused, “the magistrate, while authorizing detention of the accused shall peruse the report furnished by the police officer in terms of Section 41 and only after recording its satisfaction...will authorize detention,” the bench of Justices C K Prasad and P C Ghose said.

I t also said that this check list for arrest and deten tion would apply to all offences, which are punished with a prison term less than 7 years. Punishment under Section 498A is a maximum of three years but it had been made a cognizable and nonbailable offence, which made grant of bail to the accused a rarity in courts.

But the court singled out the dowry harassment cases as the most abused and misused provision, though the legislature had enacted it with the laudable object to prevent harassment of women in matrimonial homes.

Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Prasad said there had been a phenomenal increase in dowry harass ment cases in India in the last few years. “The fact that Section 498A is a cognizable and non-bailable offence has lent it a dubious place of pride amongst the provisions that are used as weapons rather than shield by disgruntled wives,” he said.

“The simplest way to harass is to get the husband and his relatives arrested under this provision. In a quite number of cases, bed-ridden grand-fathers and grandmothers of the husbands, their sisters living abroad for decades are arrested,“ he said.

The Times of India’s View For long now, concerns have been expressed about stringent anti-dowry laws being misused by some women to harass or blackmail their in-laws. These apprehensions have not only been expressed by courts, women's activists too have acknowledged that such misuse is not unknown. It was, therefore, necessary for the law to take this reality into account.

The apex court's order does just that. Automatic arrest was one of the provisions that lent itself most to abuse and making it mandatory for a magistrate to sanction arrest should help curb this abuse of law. Beyond that, there's a lesson for all of us ¬ social ills can't be eliminated just by enacting laws, as India tends to do. Society as a whole needs to join the movement against them.

Supreme Court’s guidelines for arrests in dowry cases

SC enforces guidelines for arrests in dowry cases

The Times of India Jul 04 2014

Cops Face Action If They Fail To Follow `Dos & Don'ts' List

The Supreme Court has warned the police of departmental action and contempt proceedings if they do not follow the checklist in the Criminal Procedure Code mandating them to weigh the need to arrest a person accused of dowry harassment.

A bench of Justices CK Prasad and PC Ghose said police must follow the `Dos and Don'ts' prescribed under Section 41 of CrPC before arresting a person in an offence punishable with less than seven years of imprisonment on being found guilty.

The checklist mandates that a person accused of such an offence can be arrested if the police officer is satisfied that it was necessary:

to prevent such person from committing any further offence for proper investigation of the case

to prevent the accused from causing disappearance of evidence

to prevent the accused from tampering with evidence

to prevent the person from inducing, threatening or luring the witness

to dissuade him/her from disclosing facts to police officer or the court

to prevent the accused from absconding

to secure his presence before the court during the hearing

The bench said the law mandated the police officer to record reasons in writing why he came to the conclusion that arrest was necessary and that he had satisfied himself with each and every provision of the checklist. Justice Prasad, writing the judgment, said: “In pith and core, the police officer before arrest must put a question to himself, why arrest?

Is it really required? What purpose it will serve/What object will it achieve?

“Before arrest, first the police officers should have reason to believe on the basis of information and material that the accused has committed the offence. Apart from this, the police officer has to be satisfied further that the arrest is necessary for one or the more purposes envisaged under Section 41.“ If the police arrest and produce a person before a magistrate, and if he finds the arrest was in breach of the checklist, then he “is duty-bound not to authorize further detention and release the accused“, the bench said.

The court said the legislature had inserted Section 41 in CrPC to “avoid unnecessary arrest or threat of arrest looming large on accused“. This provision asks police to issue a notice to the accused specifying the time and date for his appearance for purpose of investigation. If the accused complies and cooperates with the investigation, he would not be arrested.

Sc said if cops scrupulously adhered to the Section 41 mandate, then “the wrong committed by police officers intentionally or unwittingly would be reversed and the number of cases which come to the court for grant of anticipatory bail will substantially reduce“.

Naming husband’s relatives does not make them accused: SC

Merely naming distant relatives not enough to make them accused in dowry cases: SC

Satya Prakash, Hindustan Times New Delhi, September 17, 2014

Merely naming the husband’s distant relations is not enough to summon them as accused in dowry cases, the Supreme Court has ruled.

A bench of Justice V Gopala Gowda and Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel said courts cannot summon distant relations of a man in dowry cases in absence of any specific role attributed to them and material to support the allegations. Courts have to be careful in such cases, it emphasised.

“Only the husband, his parents or at best close family members may be expected to demand dowry or to harass the wife but not distant relations, unless there is tangible material to support allegations made against such distant relations,” the bench said quashing the charges against distant relations of a woman’s husband in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.

The verdict comes barely two-and-a-half-month after the top court put an end to the practice of automatic arrest under the anti-dowry law, expressing concern over the misuse of Section 498A of IPC by “disgruntled wives” against in-laws and husbands. It had asked state governments to ensure that the police didn’t go on an arresting spree -- as was the practice -- in dowry harassment cases.

The attitude to arrest first and then proceed with the rest was "despicable" and must be curbed, it had said, adding police must give reasons and proof to magistrate before making an arrest under Section 498A of IPC, the SC had said in July.

In the instant case, the woman in question had names distant relations of her husband along with her husband and in-laws under Section 406 of IPC (criminal breach of trust) and Section 6 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961 after the husband filed a petition for divorce in 2010. Those names in the FIR included the grandson of the brother of her husband’s grandfather and and some others whose names were added in a subsequent complaint without any specific allegations against them.

The Allahabad HC had refused to quash the charges against them. But terming it a clear abuse of process of the court, the SC quashed all charges against the accused – who were all distant relations of the complainant woman.

Concerned over its abuse, the Law Commission and Parliament’s standing committee on home affairs had recommended that offences under Section 498A IPC be made compoundable i.e. husband and wife should be allowed to settle the dispute between themselves.

Wife’s ancestral property is not dowry: SC

FROM THE ARCHIVES OF ‘‘THE TIMES OF INDIA’’: 2008

Dhananjay Mahapatra | TNN

Seeking share in wife’s ancestral property is not dowry, says SC

In a legal regime which takes a very strong view of dowry deaths, there appears to be a small respite for husbands. For, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that asking for the wife’s share in ancestral property from in-laws would not come under the definition of “dowry”. This judgment could become a small but significant breather for husbands, on whom the courts virtually impose the onus of coming clean on dowry death charges if their wives die an unnatural death within seven years of marriage and there had been past allegations of harassment.

“Demanding her share in the ancestral property will not amount to a dowry demand,” said a bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and Harjit Singh Bedi while dismissing a man’s appeal seeking acquittal in a dowry death case. However, it reduced the sentence from 10 years to 7 years prison term. Baldev Singh had moved the apex court challenging a Punjab and Haryana high court verdict convicting him for abetting the suicide of his wife. The court had acquitted his mother and sister of dowry harassment charges.

Rejecting his plea for acquittal like his mother and sister, the bench said unnatural death of a woman in her matrimonial home within seven years of marriage raises a presumption of dowry harassment against the husband.

It clarified that Section 304-B of the IPC and Section 113-B of the Evidence Act provided that the onus would be on the husband to prove his innocence if there had been allegations of dowry harassment proximate to the unnatural death.

“There must be existence of a proximate and live link between the effect of cruelty based on dowry demand and the concerned death. If alleged incident of cruelty is remote in time and has become stale enough not to disturb mental equilibrium of the woman concerned (to take extreme step), it would be of no consequence,” said Justice Pasayat, writing the judgment for the bench.

Husband will not inherit stridhan if wife dies ‘mysteriously’ within 7years: SC

The Times of India, Jan 20 2016

AmitAnand Choudhary

7-year hitch: Hubby can't be heir 

The Supreme Court has held that a man would not be entitled to claim property and stridhan gifted to his wife if she dies under mysterious circumstances within seven years of marriage, bringing the case within the ambit of dowry death. A bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur, Justices A K Sikri and R Bhanumathi clarified that in case of natural death, the heirs of the woman would be entitled to claim the properties but in case the woman dies under mysterious circumstances within seven years of her marriage, the properties would be handed over to her children or her parents in case the couple has no children.

Enumerating Section 6 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, the bench said the dowry articles must be handed over to the woman within three months after the marriage and the husband or inlaws could be prosecuted for not giving back the movable and immovable properties within the stipulated time.

“If the dowry amount or articles of the married woman was placed in the custody of her husband or in-laws, they would be deemed to be trustees of the same. The person receiving dowry articles or the person who has dominion over the same, as per Section 6 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, is bound to return the same within three months after the date of marriage to the woman in connection with whose marriage it is given,“ the bench said.

The bench said the husband and in-laws would be guilty of a dowry offence punishable up to a two-year jail term if they refuse to hand over the dowry property and the Act also laid down that even after conviction they would have to return the property. It passed the order on a plea filed by a man and his kin facing prosecution for returning the dowry article to parents of his wife who died under suspicious circumstances 15 months after marriage.

All demands are dowry

The Times of India Mar 01 2015

Amit Choudhary

Any demand by hubby, in-laws is dowry: SC

Putting an end to the judicial tendency to interpret dowry in a narrow sense, the Supreme Court has said any demand made by the husband or his relatives before or after the marriage would come within the definition of dowry. Expanding the ambit of dowry, the court overruled its earlier verdicts in which it had said demand for money for meeting some urgent domestic expenses could not be termed as dowry demand. A bench of Justices T S Thakur, R F Nariman and Prafulla C Pant said dowry must be given a pragmatic interpretation to fulfill the objectives of the Dowry Prohibition Act. “Any money or property or valuable security demanded by any of the persons mentioned in Section 2 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, at or before or at any time after the marriage which is reasonably connected to the death of a married woman, would necessarily be in connection with or in relation to the marriage unless, the facts of a given case clearly and unequivocally point otherwise,” it said.

See also

Dowry-related crimes: India <> Dowry: Pakistan <> Dowry prohibition laws: India