JUDGMEMT

Thomas, J.—A bride in her incipient twenties was whacked to death at her nuptial home. After gagging her mouth the assailants treated her for some time as a football by kicking her incessantly and thereafter as a hockey puck by lambasting her with truncheons until she died of bilateral tension haemothorax. Her husband and his brother and father were indicted for her murder. But when all the material witnesses turned hostile to the prosecution the trial court, being foreclosed against all options, acquitted them.

2. Undeterred by the said acquittal the State of Karnataka made a venture by filing an appeal before the High Court of Karnataka. A Division Bench of the High Court, looking at the factual matrix of the case, lamented “O Tempora O Mores” as the learned judges said by way of prologue that “it is virtually a matter of shame that in this day and date, indiscriminate attacks and abnormally high degree of violence are directed against married women in certain quarters and that the law is doing little to curb this type of utterly obnoxious and anti-social activities.” Learned Judges after reaching a cul de sac, swerved over to a different offence i.e. dowry death an