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...

Bombay High Court has held Kishor Dattatraya Shinde vs. State of Maharashtra, held that mere harassment alone, would not amount to abetting a person to commit suicide. Division bench comprising of Justice Ranjit More and Justice V. L. Achliya, there has to be a direct or clear intention or means rea to commit the offence to attract the provisions of section 306 of the Indian Penal Code. The petitioner in this application was a senior official of the deceased. He was accused of the offence under Section 306 of the IPC. The allegations made in the FIR was that the senior officers of deceased were harassing him and he was not given leave and because of that he committed suicide. In the suicide note, deceased has stated that the petitioner and two others made him suffer hardships. Perusing the FIR as well as suicide-note, the Court said that it does not contain anything to suggest that the Applicant or other officers had instigated the deceased to commit suicide or engaged in conspiracy to...