MillenniumPost
Delhi

Cop jailed for mistreating sister-in-law for dowry

A Delhi Police constable has been sentenced to three years in jail by a court for subjecting his brother's wife to cruelty for bringing insufficient dowry, which eventually led her to commit suicide.

Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Gurdeep Singh sentenced 48-year-old Mahipal while ruing that despite being a member of a law-enforcing agency, he himself breached law.

'The convict is member of the law-enforcing agency and he earns his bread through enforcement of law. It was his duty to prevent breach of law. He cannot become party to commission of the offense and therefore no leniency can be shown to him,' the court said.

The court held him guilty of abusing and even beating his younger brother's wife Sunita, who had eventually committed suicide.

The court, however, acquitted six others of victim Sunita's in-laws' family - including her husband who died during pendency of the trial - of the charges of harassing her and abetting her suicide.

'Since the husband has died, I am refraining from making any comment against him regarding harassment to the deceased by him,' the judge said.

While sentencing Mahipal, the judge also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on him.

According to the prosecution, victim Sunita, who had married Satpal in December 1991, was found hanging in her matrimonial house in June 2005.

It said after three years of her marriage, Sunita's in-laws had started harassing her for bringing insufficient dowry and they also used to instigate her husband to beat her.

Sunita's father told the court that Mahipal used to tell his brother Satpal to goad Sunita to bring Rs 5 lakh from her parents to enable them to buy a bus.

He said that she had told him that her husband and Mahipal used to threaten her with knives and say that she and her children would be killed if she failed to bring the money.

He said he had given big amounts of money to the accused several times so that his daughter could live happily.

Police said a day prior to the incident, Sunita had called up her parents to say that her in-laws were troubling her and that anything could happen to her.

On 10 June 2005, Satpal informed Sunita's parents that she had hanged herself to death.

Mahipal had sought leniency on the ground that he was the sole breadwinner of his family and had to look after them, but the court refused and gave him the maximum sentence under the Indian Penal Code for the offence of subjecting a woman to cruelty for dowry.

'There were harassments intermittently after 1997. If one persists with the demand, it becomes cruelty which can drive a woman to commit suicide. The circumstance in which victim has committed suicide and subsequent circumstance whereby the information was not given in time either to the police or to the parents of the deceased would further show that the victim was harassed and cruelty was committed on her,' it said.

The court, however, acquitted Mahipal of the charges of abetting the victim to commit suicide and also acquitted other five accused saying that the prosecution has failed to prove its case against them.




Next Story
Share it