KOLKATA: A woman's suicide within seven years of marriage does not automatically attract the provisions of abetment against her husband and in-laws, the Calcutta High Court said on Wednesday, setting aside a husband's conviction of
abetment to suicide
.
Section 113A of the
Indian Evidence Act
provides for the presumption of abetment by a husband and in-laws if a woman's suicide occurs within seven years of marriage and if she has been subjected to cruelty.
However,
Justice Rai Chattopadhyay
pointed out that this does not qualify in the present case as there was no prima facie evidence of cruelty on the wife.
"Merely a person committing suicide within a period of seven years from the date of her marriage would not be sufficient to attract the said presumption of law, unless it is seen prima facie through materials that the charge-sheeted accused had subjected her to cruelty," the judge said.
A Purulia trial court had convicted the accused husband in 2012 and sentenced him to seven years of rigorous punishment. Two years earlier, after the suicide of the woman, her father had filed an FIR, stating that his daughter had faced cruelty at the hands of her husband and his family members. The husband's appeal in the high court against this conviction pointed out that most of the witnesses were declared hostile by the court during the trial and there was no substantive evidence.
The HC noted that all witnesses denied any knowledge regarding the victim's cause of death, and added that the trial court exercised some amount of guess work by recording that the victim must not have been in a position to share her agony or the torture inflicted upon her to anyone, and in guessing that the birth of a girl child was the cause of torture. "It appears that the trial judge has proceeded on absolutely erroneous considerations which are not abiding by the law as prevailing," said Justice Chattopadhyay.
English (US) ·