Legal Reference Library

A Curative Bench, led by Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur, has upheld a 2014 Supreme Court verdict that men cannot be “automatically” arrested on dowry harassment complaints filed by their wives. The four-judge Bench found no fault with the verdict that the dowry harassment law had become a “menace”, more often used as “weapons rather than shields by disgruntled wives”. Justices Anil R. Dave, J.S. Khehar and P.C. Ghose were in the Bench. Days before his retirement in 2014, Justice Chandramauli Kumar Prasad led a Bench that lamented that courts were filled with mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law and fathers-in-law and husbands facing prosecution under Section 498 A (dowry harassment) of the Indian Penal Code. Dowry harassment is a cognisable and non-bailable offence. If guilty, a person faces up to three years' imprisonment and fine. Women’s rights groups were irked by the verdict, and the National Commission for Women sought a rare curative relief in the court. In his verdict...

Disposing of a dowry harassment petition, Justice C T Selvam of the Madurai bench on Wednesday said money demanded by a person from his wife and in-laws for investing in business cannot be construed as dowry demand and tried under Section 4 of Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961.  He said it was necessary for a complainant to prove that money was demanded only as dowry. The Judge accepted the petitioner's submission that money had been demanded for conduct of business, but that the same was not demanded as dowry. Such a demand for money for conduct of business would attract IPC Section 498A (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty), the judge said and ordered that the petitioners be prosecuted under this provision, apart from IPC Sec. 506(I) (criminal intimidation). The Judge exonerated the complainant's father-in-law, saying he was in no way connected with the case. He directed the Judicial Magistrate in Tiruchirapalli, where the case was filed i...