The Madras High Court Bench here has confirmed the conviction and seven-year rigorous imprisonment imposed by a Mahila court in Tiruchi on a businessman, his parents and sister in an 18-year-old dowry death case.
Dismissing an appeal filed by the convicts in 2007, Justice M. Sathyanarayanan rejected their contention that alleged demand of Rs. 50,000 from the bride’s family, after the marriage, for investing in business could not be termed demand of dowry.
Since the father and mother of the prime convict, O. Chandrasekaran, died in 2010 and 2011 respectively, pending adjudication of the appeal, the judge directed police in Musiri taluk to secure the other two convicts and make them undergo the sentence.
The judge said though the convicts had claimed that the victim died of self-immolation on September 17, 1997, leaving behind a one-year-old girl child, the post- mortem report revealed that she could have died of asphyxia due to throttling of her neck.
He also said the torture meted out to the woman by the convicts, who went to the extent of tonsuring her head in order to prevent her from attending her brother’s marriage, could be visualised clearly through the evidence adduced by the prosecution witnesses.
Stating that the abnormal death of the woman within seven years of her marriage due to dowry demand and the fact that she had been subjected to cruelty by her husband and his relatives had been proved, the judge said the convicts had not produced acceptable evidence to rebut the prosecution case.
