Wife's demand for share in ancestral property amounts to dowry demand if made under husband's pressure: Calcutta HC

The Calcutta High Court recently held that a wife's demand for her lawful share in ancestral property, if made under pressure from her husband, may amount to a dowry demand.

A Division Bench of Justice Arijit Banerjee and Justice Apurba Sinha Ray made the observation while partly allowing an appeal against the conviction of a husband in a dowry death case.

In the July 2 judgment, the Court observed that while a woman is legally entitled to claim her share in ancestral property, such a claim would fall within the ambit of a dowry demand if it is made because of pressure exerted by the husband.

"It is true that a lady can demand her share in her ancestral property but when such demand appears to be a result of direction and pressure from her husband, we cannot say that such demand would not come under the broader term of 'dowry demand'," held the Court.

The case arose from the death of a woman and her minor daughter, who were found hanging in the matrimonial home in June 2014, around four years after the woman's marriage.

The trial court noted that the woman had died by suicide and had caused the death of her daughter before taking her own life. It convicted the husband and his parents for cruelty and dowry death. The husband was sentenced to life imprisonment while the parents-in-law were awarded seven years' imprisonment.

Before the High Court, the husband argued that there was no evidence of any dowry demand and that the woman had merely sought her lawful share in her ancestral property.

However, the Court noted that the evidence showed the woman's brother had earlier sold portions of the family's ancestral property and given her share of the sale proceeds. It found that even after this, the husband had continuously pressured the woman to ask her brother to sell the remaining ancestral property and hand over the money corresponding to her share.

According to the Court, although a woman has a legal right to claim her share in ancestral property, the evidence established that, in this case, the demand was made because of sustained pressure exerted by the husband to bring money from her parental home.

Such circumstances, the Court held, brought the demand within the ambit of a dowry demand.

The Court also rejected the argument that the absence of independent witnesses weakened the prosecution case. It observed that demands for dowry are generally made within the privacy of the matrimonial home and not in the presence of outsiders.

The husband had also contended that the first information report (FIR), lodged two days after the incident, was unreliable because the complainant (deceased woman's elder brother) had consulted lawyers before filing it.

Rejecting this contention, the High Court held that the delay in lodging the FIR did not weaken the prosecution case.

"When an unfortunate incident of death of one’s sister and her baby child occurred, suddenly, it may make the close relatives stunned and speechless and they might have been placed in a state of indecisiveness. In our view, such delay cannot give a fatal blow to the prosecution case. Moreover, taking legal advice on such a scenario is the most reasoned step on the part of the defacto complainant," said the Court.

However, the Court found no substantive evidence against the parents-in-law, noting that the complainant did not implicate them during trial and no other witness specifically attributed any role to them.

Therefore, it acquitted the parents-in-law of all charges, while upholding the husband's conviction and reducing his sentence from life imprisonment to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment. It observed that life imprisonment under Section 304B Indian Penal Code (IPC) (dowry death) should be reserved for rare cases.

Advocates Avishek Sinha and Madhusree Banerjee appeared for the husband (appellant).

Public Prosecutor Debasish Roy along with advocates Sreyashee Biswas, and Nandini Chatterjee represented the State.

[Read Judgment]