This story is from April 4, 2015

28 yrs after teen ended life, hubby & mom-in-law convicted of abetment

Twenty-eight years after a newly wed 18-year-old set herself ablaze in Bhandup, the Bombay high court has convicted her husband and mother-in-law for harassing her and driving her to commit suicide.
28 yrs after teen ended life, hubby & mom-in-law convicted of abetment
MUMBAI: Twenty-eight years after a newly wed 18-year-old set herself ablaze in Bhandup, the Bombay high court has convicted her husband and mother-in-law for harassing her and driving her to commit suicide.
Justice Mridula Bhatkar held Ramdas Gaikwad—he is now remarried and the father of two daughters—guilty of treating his first wife, Chhaya, cruelly and abetting her suicide.
The high court held his mother guilty of harassing her daughter-in-law but as she is 65 years old and ill, sentenced her to the prison term that she has already undergone.
Ramdas is in jail since March 15, after non-bailable warrants were issued when he failed to appear before the court for the hearing of the appeal.
“This is an usual and unfortunate case of cruel treatment by the husband and mother-in-law to a newly married girl,” said the judge. “She was 18 years old and hardly completed three months of marriage. At a tender age, she was subjected to cruelty by her husband and took such a drastic decision of committing suicide.”
The court relied on a special law 113A of the Indian Evidence Act which says that if a married woman commits suicide within seven years of her wedding and if it is proved that she was treated cruelly by her spouse and her in-laws, then the presumption is that her husband and his relatives abetted the suicide. “It is proved from the dying declarations that both Ramdas and his mother used to abuse her and beat her, and she was not fed on some occasions,” said the judge.

Ramdas and Chhaya got married in November 1986. After three months, when her brother visited her she told him that her husband and in-laws used to harass her and starve her. Four days later, on February 18, 1987, Chhaya was kept without food. Ramdas slapped her as she took time to come out of the bathroom. Half an hour later, when he left for work, she poured kerosene on herself and set herself ablaze. A neighbour rushed Chhaya to hospital, where she was admitted with 65% burn injuries.
In her dying declarations to the investigation officer and special executive magistrate, she detailed the harassment. In 1994, a trial court sentenced Ramdas and his mother to four years in jail. Their appeals came up for hearing recently before the high court after 20 years.
Advocate Amita Kuttikrishnan, who was appointed by the HC legal aid cell to represent the duo, said there was no evidence of cruelty and the allegations of harassment were the “normal wear and tear of a marriage”. But additional public prosecutor Arfan Sait argued that the victim, who was barely 18 years old, had committed suicide within three months of her marriage because of harassment. The HC said there was proof that the mother-son duo had harassed Chhaya, and the evidence that Ramdas had slapped her on the morning of the incident proved that he had abetted the suicide.
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About the Author
Shibu Thomas

Shibu Thomas is a special correspondent at The Times of India in Mumbai. He writes on legal issues in the Bombay high Court and other courts in the city. He has written on PILs filed by citizens, human rights violations and prisoners caught in the legal system. He has travelled across two continents and plans to cover the remaining five.

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