Hyderabad: A 35-year-old man, on trial for abetting the suicide of his pregnant wife by harassing her for dowry, was sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment while his mother was sentenced to simple imprisonment of seven years after they inadvertently admitted to paying Rs 4 lakh to the deceased woman’s family in a bid to reach an out-of-court settlement.
Anand Kumar and his mother Bharatamma, 52, were accused of abetting the suicide of Lavanya in 2023. During the trial, despite claiming innocence, the mother-son duo said they had paid money to the victim’s family as compensation.
“This admitted evidence is considered to say that they admitted their guilt and liability for Lavanya’s death, and that is the reason they paid such an amount,” the Ranga Reddy district court said while delivering the verdict in the case on March 28.
The court, however, did not fine them in view of the amount already paid to Lavanya’s family and awarded rigorous life imprisonment to Anand and simple imprisonment for seven years to his mother, Bharatamma.
Anand and Lavanya got married in August 2017, and Lavanya died by suicide in December 2017. When Anand and his mother Bharatamma pleaded with the court to show leniency in the sentence, the court pointed out that “this is a case where they threatened Lavanya’s family members that they would kill her and also terminate her pregnancy, showing disregard that she is a pregnant woman, showing no apathy at all.”
While observing that there was dowry harassment from the very next day of the marriage, the court remarked that “simply because they paid Rs 4 lakh, they cannot escape from the liability of dowry death as per law.”
Further, in their defence, the duo imputed unchastity against Lavanya, blaming her character, but after examining the evidence, the court termed their contention as a baseless defence and observed that it does not help them to come out of this criminal case.
“This shows their conduct that they are ready to throw any blame on Lavanya to escape from their liability,” the court said.
Though initially the police registered a murder case against Anand and Bharatamma, the court noted that there is no material to show that it was a case of murder and, based on the evidence, convicted them guilty of a dowry death. The court acquitted five other family members of Anand who were charged in the case, stating that they are not attached with liability under dowry death.