The main legal point established in the judgment is the need to establish cruelty or harassment for dowry and the presumption of abetment of suicide against the accused in cases of dowry death.

JUDGMENT :

HARNARESH SINGH GILL, J.

1. Case is taken up for hearing through video conferencing.

2. Challenge in the present petition is to the order dated 08.09.2020 passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge, Narnaul, vide which charge under Section 304-B IPC has been framed against the petitioner.

3. Learned counsel for the petitioner has contended that there was no specific allegation against the petitioner regarding demand of dowry and rather the allegations were general in nature. He drew the attention of this Court towards the loan sanction letter (Annexure P-6) to contend that the petitioner had purchased the car after raising a loan from the HDFC Bank, Narnaul, and he had been paying the installments regularly. He has further contended that as per the allegations, the petitioner and his other family members had been harassing the deceased for bringing insufficient dowry, but no such incident was ever reported to the police. Moreover, there is no independent corroboration to the allegations made by the complainant. In fact, the petitioner had never demanded any dowry either at the time of marriage or subsequent thereto. Had there been a demand for dowry at any time, the complainant, who is a police officer, would not have kept quiet.

4. Learned counsel for the petitioner has further drawn the attention of this Court towards the photographs (Annexure P-3) to indicate that the petitioner and the deceased had been residing happily and there was no occasion for her to take such an extreme step of committing suicide. He has also relied upon the whatsapp chat (Annexure P-8). In support of his contentions, he has relied upon the decision rendered by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in Mahesh Kumar Vs. State of Haryana 2019 AIR (SC) 4225.

5. E.converso, the learned State counsel while opposing the prayer made by the learned counsel for the petitioner, has submitted that in the instant case, the death of a woman had occurred within seven years of marriage in her matrimonial home and it was an unnatural death. As per Section 113-A of the Evidence Act, 1872, the presumption as to abetment of suicide has to be raised against the accused person and it is for him to rebut this presumption, which he has failed to do so.

6. I have considered the rival contentions of learned counsel for the parties.

7. Suicide, no doubt, is a self murder. But when an act of suicide is not a voluntary act but is committed under compulsion of adverse circumstances, the law punishes those who could be held responsible for bringing it about, directly or indirectly, either by active suggestion or by creating objectionable conditions which drive the victim to it, but only if these are intended to achieve the desired object. Callousness and apathy in extreme form would certainly go to show that an atmosphere was created which made the victim dropped down, thereby giving indication that persistent cruelty instigated the victim to commit suicide.

8. Before proceeding further, it would be apposite to reproduce Section 304-B IPC which is as under:

“304B. Dowry death.—(1) Where the death of a woman is caused by any burns or bodily injury or occurs otherwise than under normal circumstances within seven years of her marriage and it is shown that soon before her death she was subjected to cruelty or harassment by her husband or any relative of her husband for, or in connection with, any demand for dowry, such death shall be called “dowry death”, and such husband or relative shall be deemed to have caused her death. Explanation.—For the purpose of this sub-section, “dowry” shall have the same meaning as in section 2 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961.

(2) Whoever commits dowry death shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than seven years but which may extend to imprisonment for life.

9. The aforesaid section clearly provides that if a married woman dies otherwise than under normal circumstances within seven years of her marriage and it is shown that