Husband, father-in-law found guilty of dowry death 2 years after woman’s suicide | Mumbai News

Navi Mumbai: More than a year and a half after a 29-year-old woman committed suicide in her apartment in Kharghar, the police acted on a warrant issued by a district court in Panvel. The deceased’s family approached the court after the police failed to pursue the case.

“For each of the 19 court hearings, I traveled for over 15 hours from Ahmednagar to Panvel to register a case in this case. I am glad that the police have booked a place for her husband and father-in-law,” her elder brother, who lives in Ahmednagar, Madhya Pradesh, told Hindustan Times.

On April 20, 2023, a resident of Sector 12 Kharghar was found hanging from the ceiling fan in her apartment. The next day, the police registered an accidental death report (ADR) in the case, although her family members suspected that she was forced to take this step due to dowry-related harassment from her husband and father-in-law.

“My sister has experienced a lot of suffering in the five years of marriage,” her older brother said. She called their father hours before he died by suicide, saying that her in-laws were pestering her to get money and gold to use for her sister-in-law’s wedding, and were threatening to hurt her if she didn’t. So. “After all this, my sister and her husband’s phone became unreachable. Then at 10 p.m., my father received another call saying that my sister had died by suicide,” he said.

Confident that there was more to the case than a simple suicide, the family of the deceased approached the Kharghar police to file a complaint. “But the police kept playing. We were repeatedly assured that they would contact us regarding our statements, but the calls never came,” her brother said.

In May 2023, the family approached the Panvel Magistrate’s Court with a request to register a first information report on the suspicion that the deceased had been murdered. Nearly 18 months and 19 hearings later, on November 12, the court allowed their plea and ordered the Kharghar police to file an FIR and investigate the case. The circumstances of the death, which occurred within seven years of the marriage, were not normal and the accused may have committed recognizable and unknown crimes, the court said, emphasizing the need to initiate a police investigation.

According to an FIR registered on November 25 pursuant to a court order, the deceased was regularly harassed over demands for dowry and ridiculed for not being able to bear children. Her husband and father-in-law were covered by the provisions of Art. 304 (B) (dowry death) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.

“According to the autopsy report, the cause of death was hanging. Therefore, this death was registered as an accident. Now that the family is alleging murder over dowry demands, we will conduct a thorough investigation,” said senior police inspector Dipak Vijay Surve.