Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday told high courts to be circumspect in exercising discretion to grant bail to the accused in dowry death cases, highlighting that the social evil continues to take the lives of thousands of women.Cancelling a Patna high court order granting bail to an accused husband, whose wife was murdered within one and a half years of marriage, allegedly because her parents could not meet dowry demands, a bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Vijay Bishnoi expressed deep concern over the “seemingly mechanical approach being adopted by the high courts in granting bail in cases of dowry deaths.”Advocate Samir Ali Khan and Rajnish Kumar, appearing for Bihar govt and mother of the deceased woman, respectively, argued that Patna high court had erred by granting bail despite the accused having been in custody for just one and a half years. They said that high court had not assigned any special reason for granting relief to the man accused of a heinous offence.The court termed the high court order as ”wholly unsustainable” and said, “in a very serious crime like dowry death, the high court should have been very careful in exercising its discretion… The high court lost sight of many important aspects of the matter, more particularly the post-mortem report indicating number of injuries on the body of the deceased, and the presumption of commission of offence as provided under Section 114 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.”Having heard innumerable dowry harassment cases, many involving murder or suicide by the woman, in courts, the judges said, “Dowry deaths are indeed a profound disgrace and a major social evil representing a severe violation of human rights and dignity.“Despite the legal prohibitions, this practice continues to result in the unnatural deaths of thousands of women, often through murder or (as they are) driven to suicide because of greed-driven demands for money or valuables from the groom’s family. Dowry deaths are a severe blot on society,” the bench said.When the accused husband’s counsel Santosh Kumar Mishra argued that the deceased was of unsound mind and died by suicide by jumping from the sixth floor of an apartment building, the bench said the accused would have to prove this claim during trial.It said that as the trial is in progress, the high court should have rejected the bail plea. Setting aside the bail order, the bench directed the accused to surrender before jail authorities within a week.
