Supreme Court on criminal proceedings against criminals

New Delhi:

The Supreme Court on Thursday said the purpose of criminal proceedings is to bring a wrongdoer to justice and not to exact revenge or pursue a vendetta.

This observation was made by a bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and Sanjay Karol while hearing a case of criminal breach of trust in which a man named Padala Veerabhadra Rao from Telangana had accused his daughter's former parents-in-law of not returning her 'streedhan' given at the time of her wedding.

Streedhan is a term that refers to gifts, including money and property, that a woman receives from her parents, relatives or in-laws.

The court reaffirmed the existing legal position that a woman (wife or ex-wife) has the “sole right” to “Streedhan” and sole authority over it.

Referring to the criminal case brought by Mr Rao against his daughter's former in-laws, the court said: “We can further observe that the objective of criminal proceedings is to bring a wrongdoer to justice and not to seek revenge or to carry out a vendetta against persons against whom the complainant may have a grudge.” Mr Rao claimed that he had gifted gold jewellery and other items at the wedding in 1999 and that the couple had travelled to the United States thereafter.

He claimed that his daughter was tortured in the United States, which left his wife severely disturbed and eventually killed on June 6, 2008.

In his complaint, Mr Rao said his daughter and son-in-law divorced in the United States on August 14, 2015, after 16 years of marriage.

In an FIR filed in 2021, Mr. Rao alleged that the jewellery he had gifted to his daughter but entrusted to her in-laws at the time of wedding had not been returned. His daughter remarried in 2018. The FIR was registered under Section 406 IPC (criminal breach of trust).

The court said that the jurisprudence as developed by the Supreme Court in such matters was clear as regards the “exclusive right” of the woman (wife or ex-wife) to be the sole owner of “Streedhan”.

“It has been held that a husband has no right and it must be concluded that a father also has no right if the daughter is alive and well and quite capable of taking decisions such as pursuing the recovery of 'Stridhan',” said Justice Karol, who wrote the judgment on behalf of the court.

The Court found that the suit to secure possession of the items had been filed more than 20 years after the date of marriage and five years after the settlement of all marital issues at the time of divorce, and not by the plaintiff's daughter but by Mr. Rao himself.

“This, coupled with the fact that there is no power of attorney on the part of the plaintiff's daughter in his favour to initiate proceedings for the return of the 'Stridhan' which belongs exclusively to her, raises the question on what basis the plaintiff has initiated the present proceedings,” it added.

After going through the material on record, the court held that in the facts of the case, there was not a shred of evidence that he had entrusted his daughter's 'Stridhan' to her former parents-in-law, which was allegedly kept illegally by them.

“In view of the foregoing, we are also of the view that the charge under Section 6 of the Dowry Prohibition Act is without merit and therefore fails. Consequently, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the proceedings initiated by the plaintiff against the present appellants (former in-laws) must be quashed and dismissed. Any action instituted in consequence thereof is inadmissible in law. The questions raised in this appeal are answered accordingly,” the court stated in its order.

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