Man gets 10 years in jail for pushing wife to commit suicide over dowry

PUNE: The court of additional sessions judge R V Adone here has convicted and sentenced a 30-year-old Padmavati resident to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment for subjecting his wife to cruelty and driving her to commit suicide over a dowry demand in 2012.

The wife, Mayuri Mithun More, was six months pregnant when she committed suicide by setting herself ablaze in their house at Taljai vasti in Padmavati on the afternoon of March 14, 2012.

The Sahakarnagar police then booked her husband, Mithun, father-in-law Tanaji Sopan More, brother-in-law Sachin Tanaji More and Sachin’s wife Vaishali for cruelty and dowry death, and had chargesheeted them for the same. The court acquitted the three in-laws for a want of evidence.

Mithun was found guilty of offences under Section 304-B (dowry death) and 498-A (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) of the Indian Penal Code and was sentenced to 10 years in jail for dowry death and two years for cruelty. The sentences are to run concurrently.

Mithun, who was in custody from April 4, 2012, till he was released on bail on June 8, 2012, was taken into custody soon after the sentencing and was sent to the Yerawada jail. “After his release on bail, he had married a second time and fathered a girl child, who is now five years old,” additional public prosecutor Leena Pathak told TOI.

“The court relied on the dying declaration recorded by the victim before a naib tehsildar, in the presence of her treating doctor. Besides, the evidence recorded by the tehsildar and the doctor corroborated the dying declaration,” Pathak said.

The accused had taken a defence that Mayuri died of burn injuries caused by an explosion in the kerosene stove. However, the spot panchanama conducted by the police soon after the incident, and the chemical analyser report, disproved the explosion claim as there were no such signs or evidence, said Pathak.

The court observed, “If at all there was explosion of stove, then the situation would have been something different. Spot panchanama and photographs shows that, it is small room and all household articles including kitchen articles are in the same room, but no articles including utensils, sofa, television are burnt, there are no ashes and black particles on it. Utensils were not scattered. There are no signs of burning of those articles. In such circumstances and in absence of evidence, there is no substance in the theory of accused that, due to explosion of stove Mayuri sustained burn injuries. Moreover, chemical analysis report clearly shows that stove is in working condition.”