NEW DELHI: Though Goa may not be plagued with deluge of cases which involve misuse of provision of the dowry law to arrest family members, in a major relief to such persons, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against automatic arrests under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), noting that it has been misused by “disgruntled” wives against their in-laws.
The judgment of the two-judge Bench also came down heavily on police for corruption in misusing its power to arrest people saying, “Our endeavour in this judgment is to ensure that police officers do not arrest accused unnecessarily and magistrates do not authorise detention casually and mechanically.”
Directing police not to arrest anybody except after thorough investigation of the case, the Court asked the state governments to ensure that the police did not arrest anyone and everyone is booked under the law. The police will now have to give reasons and proofs to the magistrate before he issues an arrest warrant.
“The attitude to arrest first and then proceed with the rest was despicable,” said the Bench of Justices Chandramauli Kumar Prasad and Pinaki Chadra Ghose. More than 50 per cent of the under-trials in Indian jails spend months in custody under the misuse of dowry law and face problems in getting justice as at times nobody in the family is left out to pursue their cases.
No surprise, the Court dubbed the anti-dowry law as “dubious.” It said: “Section 498-A of the IPC was introduced with avowed object to combat the menace of harassment to a woman at the hands of her husband and his relatives. The fact that Section 498-A is a cognizable and non-bailable offence has lent it a dubious place of pride amongst the provisions that are used as weapons rather than shield by disgruntled wives,”
Justifying its stance, the Bench cited the crime statistics in support of its observations and said 1,97,762 persons were arrested in 2012 for offence under Section 498-A and nearly a quarter of those arrested under this provision were women depicting that mothers and sisters of the husbands were liberally included in their arrest net. “We believe that no arrest should be made only because the offence is non-bailable and cognizable,” the court said.
The court cited dowry related arrests constitute 6 per cent out of the total persons arrested under the crimes committed under Indian Penal Code. It accounts for 4.5 per cent of total crimes committed under different sections of penal code, more than any other crimes except theft and hurt, it said.
While the charge-sheets in these cases is as high as 93.6 per cent, the conviction rate is only 15 per cent, the lowest across all heads of crimes, the Court noted, adding that as many as 3,72,706 cases are pending at trial stage.
Magistrates too would have to produce a report justifying the arrest. Moreover, the failure to do so will lead to departmental action and contempt of court, the Bench held.
The Court said: “The simplest way to harass is to get the husband and his relatives arrested under this provision. In quite a number of cases, bed-ridden grandfathers and grandmothers of the husbands, their sisters living abroad for decades are arrested.
The apex court said a person accused of offence punishable with imprisonment for a term which may be less than seven years or which may extend to seven years with or without fine, cannot be arrested by the police officer only on its satisfaction that such person had committed the offence.
