Dowry deaths: Mindset that women endure suffering emboldens perpetrators, says Delhi HC

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has lamented the killing of women due to dowry demands even decades after its criminalisation and said the mindset that a woman "endures" sufferings in her matrimonial home emboldens the perpetrators.

Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma therefore refused bail to a man accused of killing his wife in an inebriated state after her parents did not give in to his demand to sell their land.

The court observed cases of dowry deaths and murders often revealed a "distressing" pattern that due to societal pressure and the fear of social stigma, families often suggest or compel their daughters to adjust and live in their matrimonial homes, where they were subsequently killed or driven to suicide.

Therefore, it said, it was not always advisable to tell victims, who were visibly beaten and battered by their husbands, to continue to "endure suffering in their matrimonial homes as it is the 'right' thing to do after marriage".

"This mindset emboldens, and is exploited by, perpetrators including a husband, who kills his wife, exploiting the situation that the victim wife has nowhere else to go, as her parental family is also advising her to live with him despite the torture and physical abuse. In cases such as the present one, granting bail liberally could encourage such practices and offences," the court said.

The court's January 16 verdict said granting bail liberally in such cases could encourage such practices and offences and defeat the very purpose and intent of enactment of the Section 304B (dowry death) of IPC.

"While deciding bail applications in such cases, the constitutional courts bear in mind the intent behind enactment of provisions of law," the court said, "especially such as Section 304B of IPC." It observed though the provision was enacted in 1986 and was in existence for about 40 years, courts time and again were "saddened by the cases" reflecting women of this country still being harassed, tortured and killed, merely because they were married to a man in a "family which after the marriage, keeps demanding, as a matter of right due to the matrimonial alliance, money and dowry articles".

In the present case, the accused allegedly assaulted and murdered his wife by strangulation after about two months of marriage.

The father of the victim alleged ever since the marriage took place, the accused and his family kept demanding dowry and harassed, and abused his daughter.

Justice Sharma rejected the accused's contention that he had been in jail for over three years and said an order passed by a court of law was also a "message to the society at large".

The court said the woman's post-mortem report showed she was killed "brutally".

The law, the judge said, did not give a right to any person to kill and the fact that the accused was the husband of the victim did not mitigate the seriousness of the offence but multiplied it.