2 acquitted in dowry death case

NEW DELHI: A woman’s “U-turn” during her testimony has prompted a

Delhi court

to acquit two brothers who faced trial on charges of cruelty and causing

dowry death

of her sister. Interestingly, the sisters married both these men on the same day and lived in the same house along with their husbands’ family members. One of the sisters committed suicide and the men, along with their mother, were booked for the crime.


Though the deceased’s sister initially gave the chain of events leading to her sister’s death, she retracted from the allegations against her husband and the brother-in-law in court. Additional Sessions Judge Sunena Sharma observed, “The deceased’s sister, who was one of the most material witnesses of the prosecution case, as she was living with the deceased in the same matrimonial home, though came up with categorical allegations against all the accused persons especially with regard to deceased being subjected to physical cruelty at the hands of accused, she took a

U-turn

when she was cross-examined by the

defence

counsel.”

According to the prosecution, the woman committed suicide after being subjected to cruelty and a demand of dowry. The accused and their family members had allegedly pressured her to pay them as she had funded her daughter’s admission. The news of her death was given to the family over a phone call on October 11, 2010. Following the news, the woman’s body was taken to a hospital for post-mortem and her mother was produced before a sub-divisional magistrate (SDM). The mother told the SDM that the reason of her daughter’s death was dowry demand.

Case details show that during her deposition, the deceased’s mother supported her claims of her daughter being subjected to cruelty and dowry demand. But when she was cross-examined by defense counsel Manish Makhija, she disowned her earlier statement. According to the prosecutor, however, this was due to the fact that her other daughter and her grandchildren were living at their matrimonial home after reaching a “settlement.”

The court said that all family members of the deceased had resiled from their previous statements made before the SDM. “I do not find any need to refer to the testimony of other prosecution witnesses because their testimonies are nothing but in the nature of corroborative or link evidence,” said judge Sharma.

Both material witnesses — mother and sister — of the deceased woman had “demolished the prosecution case completely” in their cross-examination by resiling from their previous versions. “Their testimonies even in their examination in chief, are not in consonance with each other nor the same even otherwise, draw any support from the testimony of other independent witnesses examined by the prosecution,” the court added.