The Supreme Court of India has held that nothing less than life imprisonment can be awarded for felonious crimes such as dowry deaths. The bench comprising Justice Swatenkar Kumar and Justice Ranjan Gogoi have ruled this while turning down the plea filed by victim’s husband and brother-in-law stating that they were young and their mother was aged. They even pleaded that the incident occurred in 1996 and a lenient view of the sentence should be taken.
The Supreme Court has therefore upheld the lifer to victim’s husband Mukesh Bhatnagar, mother-in-law Kailasho and brother-in-law Rajesh Bhatnagar. These three were found guilty for setting ablaze Renu to death in 1996 at Roorkie in Uttarakhand when Renu couldn’t not meet their dowry demands.
The husband of the victim tried to portray the death as an accident and stated Renu died when cooking stove exploded. That plea was also turned down by the apex court.
The prosecution said, the trio harassed Renu—both physically and mentally as she couldn’t bring extra dowry in the form of Television and cooler. The court, who found the trio guilty after going through the substantial evidences said that the ingredients of IPC Sec 304 B (dowry death) were fully satisfied in the case.
(Phani)
