National   

7-year jail term in dowry death case

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has held that in a case relating to death of a girl due to dowry harassment, if the court has altered the murder charge against the accused into one of “dowry death,” punishment can be awarded only for an offence of “dowry death” and not for an offence of “murder.”

A Bench of Justice C.K. Thakker and Justice P. Sathasivam gave this ruling while reducing the sentence of life imprisonment awarded to an accused by the Andhra Pradesh High Court into seven-year imprisonment. While the maximum punishment for murder is death sentence, for ‘dowry death’, the maximum punishment is life imprisonment.

In the instant case, the appellant Vanga Sriniwas was charged with an offence of murder of his wife Vanga Vimala in January 1997. The trial court acquitted him. However, the High Court altered the charge under Section 302 IPC (murder) to Section 304 B (dowry death), reversed the acquittal order and imposed the sentence of life imprisonment. The present appeal is directed against this judgment.

Partly allowing the appeal, the Bench said the conviction and sentence for an offence under Section 302 IPC by the High Court could not be sustained since the charge had been altered.

The altered charge had not been taken note of by the High Court while arriving at a conclusion against the accused.

The Bench said that since the entire case was built on circumstantial evidence, “it is but proper to convict the accused only under Section 304B IPC and not under Section 302 IPC as ordered by the High Court.”

Writing the judgment, Mr. Justice Sathasivam said that considering the fact that the alleged occurrence took place on January 24, 1997 and the appellant/accused had undergone the agony for more than 10 years, “we are of the view that a [minimum] sentence of seven years would meet the ends of justice.”

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Small states must have full say: Ansari
Singhvi rejects charges on deal
Karat rules out mid-term polls
Rajnath terms attack “political fascism”
BJP silent on prime ministerial candidate
7-year jail term in dowry death case
Maoists on the rampage
Trademark awarded to CFA course cancelled
Three arrested for AMU student’s murder
An icon reminisces
Militant arrested
More small airports on the cards, says Patel
Six killed in rain
Apprising the EU
Compensation for family planning hiked
DMK workers attacked in Mumbai
I’ll draw swords if needed: Keshubhai
Japanese women raped
2,000 delegates to attend Astronautical Congress
Astronautical Congress to discuss space tourism

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu