SC RELIEF FOR RELATIVES CAUGHT IN DOWRY CASES

The Supreme Court observed in a judgment that courts should be careful while proceeding against distant relatives in crime pertaining to matrimonial disputes and deaths.

A Bench of Justices S.A. Bobde and L. Nageswara Rao said in a verdict that distant kin should not face trails if the allegations made against them were ‘omnibus’. They advised courts to check whether the accusations against distant relatives were specific.

This judgment came after a petition was filed by some relative of the husband of a woman who filed a complaint of dowry harassment, accusing his husband and his maternal relatives of conspiring to torture her and kidnapping her son from the US, where they were residing at that point of time.

After the Hyderabad High court refused to quash the complaint against her relatives, they moved the supreme court, pleading to drop off charges.