Beware
‘Dowry laws apply to live-in couples too’
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: Demanding money from a woman in a live-in relationship amounts to dowry harassment, a trial court in Delhi has held and sentenced a man to life imprisonment. The court went by the woman’s dying declaration that the man she lived with had set her on fire when she refused to give him money.
Initially booked under Section 304B (dowry death) and Section 498A (dowry harassment), convict Naresh was accused of setting his second wife on fire after she refused to pay him the Rs 20,000 she had received from her former husband in a divorce case.
While Naresh claimed he was already married and was not legally wedded to the victim and even the prosecution failed to prove his marital link with the woman, the court trashed his argument, saying, “No one at the point of death is presumed to lie’’. The court added that the demand for money could be termed as dowry demand. ‘Can rely on dying declaration’
New Delhi: Stating that a person on death bed would not lie, a trial court in Delhi has ruled that demand for money from that person by her partner could be termed as dowry demand. “It is on record that the accused was harassing the deceased and coercing her to meet an unlawful demand of Rs 20,000. So, it becomes clear that he was subjecting her to cruelty as per the meeting of Section 498A (dowry harassment),’’ ASJ A K Arya said.
The court also rejected the statement of Naresh’s first wife in his support.Naresh had never lived apart from her and they had a cordial relationship, she said, denying any pending divorce petition. Calling the statement “worthless’’, the court said, “The accused was involved in a clandestine relation like the present one and it is not necessary that he would have divulged these facts to his first wife.’’
The court held him guilty under the harsher Section 302 (murder) and Section 498A, and awarded him life sentence. “The dying declaration of the deceased can be relied on that the accused, being her husband, was living with her... she was burnt alive,’’ the court said. TNN
