The Supreme Court of India.
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court has said a woman's father has no right to seek recovery of her 'stridhan' as it quashed criminal proceedings initiated against a couple on a complaint made by their daughter-in-law's father for alleged illegal possession of her marital gifts after five years of divorce and three years of her remarriage in the USA.
A bench of Justices J K Maheshwari and Sanjay Karol said the object of criminal proceedings is to bring a wrongdoer to justice, and it is not a means to get revenge or seek a vendetta against persons with whom the complainant may have a grudge.
The bench said this court has been unequivocal in a series of judgments with respect to the singular right of the female (wife or former wife) as the case may be, being the sole owner of ‘stridhan’.
"It has been held that a husband has no right (over stridhan) and it has to then be necessarily concluded that a father too, has no right when the daughter is alive, well, and entirely capable of making decisions such as pursuing the cause of the recovery of her ‘stridhan’," the bench said.
Analysing the facts of the matter, the bench noted in its August 29 judgment that the marriage of the complainant's daughter was solemnised in 1999, the divorce happened in 2016 in a court in the USA by mutual consent by settling all material and financial issues and her remarriage in 2018.
"On what ground does the complainant file the subject FIR in the year 2021, is completely unexplained," the court said.
Besides finding that the FIR lodged by the complainant was "hopelessly belated in time" and the delay was not satisfactorily explained, the bench noted there was also no authorisation by his daughter to him to pursue the complaint for recovery of her 'stridhan' as mandated under Section 5 of the Power of Attorney Act, 1882.
"The action was initiated for securing possession of the articles and ornaments after a passage of more than 20 years since the date of marriage and five years after the settlement of all marital issues at the time of divorce and that too, not by the former wife, i.e., the complainant’s daughter, but by the complainant himself," the bench said.
The court also referred to Section 14 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 which talks about a Hindu female being the absolute owner of property.
Having examined the facts of the matter, the court found nothing on record to indicate possession of 'stridhan' for the appellants.
Finding none of the ingredients of the offence under Section 405 IPC or under the Dowry Prohibition Act was made out, the court set aside the Telangana High Court's judgment which declined to quash the criminal proceedings against Mulakala Malleshwara Rao and his wife.
"There is nothing on record to substantiate that the complainant’s daughter's former in-laws converted the ‘stridhan’ allegedly kept in their custody, for their own use, more so, when the parties in matrimony had never ever raised ‘stridhan’ as an issue either in the subsistence of the marriage or thereafter, especially during the time of settlement of all issues," the bench said.
The court also noted, in the FIR the authorities are requested to take action against the appellants for not returning the gifts given by the complainant to his daughter at the time of the marriage.
However, in the charge sheet such a complaint turns into a demand for dowry and being pressured into incurring expenses for marriage-related functions, the court pointed out.