New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has upheld the conviction of a man for setting his pregnant wife afire for dowry, but reduced his sentence, noting the couple had been living together since the November 2000 incident and have had three more children since.
A single-judge bench of Justice Vimal Kumar Yadav took into account the testimony of the woman, who still carries visible burn marks, that the two of them are living happily now, and that she does not want the accused to be jailed anymore.
Speaking to ThePrint, Additional Public Prosecutor Mukesh Kumar, who represented the prosecution in this case, said, “The parties settled the matter and the opposing party agreed that the conviction could continue, but the sentence was modified.”
“The maximum sentence was seven years, but the accused spent around 2 years and 6 months in jail. Since the wife was weeping and folding her hands before the court, stating it was a misunderstanding, the court granted their request for mercy”.
In its order passed on 4 May, the court noted, “The acceptance by her brother-in-law and mother-in-law and her forgiveness for them have resulted in the family coming together. Addition in the family by having three more children speaks in favour of the Appellants.”
To disturb this equilibrium would be detrimental not just for the husband and his family, but also for the victim and her children, the court noted, while pointing out that things had radically changed “for everyone and for good” in the last 25-26 years.
In this case, the husband and his family members challenged the trial court order passed on 17 January 2004. The trial court had convicted the woman’s husband, Raju, along with her in-laws for setting her on fire in Delhi’s Rajapuri area, on account of her not paying them dowry.
Significantly, the woman was five-month pregnant at the time—she later delivered a female child. Incidentally, the matter was not reported to the police, on the day of the alleged crime. In fact, she was not even taken to the hospital.
Instead, she was taken to her father’s home where she was given Ayurvedic treatment, the court noted.
In her affidavit filed in the high court, the survivor said she was living with the main accused, her husband Raju, and they had three more children since the incident. The couple now have five children.
Taking into account the victim’s testimony and the affidavit saying that did not want to take any action against Raju or his family, and was living with him happily, the court said, “Indeed, women have a very large heart.”
The court also pointed out that at the present stage, further involving custody would ruin the “cordiality” between the parties.
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The facts & the court order
The woman was set on fire by her mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and husband in Delhi’s Rajapuri area, near Hanuman Mandir, in November 2000.
Before the court, the parties said the incident occurred due to the victim and her family not being forthcoming about the kind of expectations they had from the husband and his family about dowry.
According to her police complaint, the victim’s in-laws held her hands, while her husband set her afire. She mustered the courage to lodge a police complaint in April 2001 after about 20 days of delivering her child.
Following this, Raju, along with his brother and mother, was charged with offences like cruelty and wrongful confinement under the Indian Penal Code, 1860.
In 2004, the trial court convicted all three accused family members, and handed down varying degrees of punishments, ranging from seven years to one year in jail, along with fines.
Raju was given one-year imprisonment, while his mother Bardi Devi was sentenced to one year in jail with fine. Raju’s brother, Shambhu was sentenced to seven-year in jail.
Challenging this, the accused family approached the High Court. Interestingly, the victim, who had originally filed the police complaint against them, told the court that she does not want any action against them, as the matter was resolved now.
While the victim maintained before the HC that she was happily married to the accused, and no fruitful purpose will be served by sending Raju and his family members to jail, the prosecution opposed this saying that she was still carrying burn scars on her body which were visible.
The prosecution said that the accused deserved to be punished in a manner commensurate with his act.
Pointing out how courts are often confronted with situations like this one, where the parties were once at loggerheads, but reconciled and resolved their differences to resume a normal life, the bench quoted Mahatma Gandhi and said, “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind”.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)