Criminal proceedings meant for justice, not vendetta: SC

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

A bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and Sanjay Karol made the observation while dealing with a case of criminal breach of trust in which a man named Padala Veerabhadra Rao of Telangana accused the former in-laws of his daughter of not returning the streedhan given at the time of marriage.

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

The bench reiterated the settled position of law that a female (wife or former wife) has the "singular right" on streedhan and sole authority over it.

Regarding the criminal case instituted by Rao against the former in-laws of his daughter, the bench said, "We may further observe that the object of criminal proceedings is to bring a wrongdoer to justice, and it is not a means to get revenge or seek a vendetta against persons with whom the complainant may have a grudge."

Rao's claim was that he gave gold ornaments and other articles at the time of the wedding in 1999, and thereafter the couple went to the USA.

He claimed that while in the USA, his daughter was tortured due to which his wife got severely disturbed and eventually died on June 6, 2008.

In his complaint, Rao said his daughter and son-in-law got divorced in 2016, after 16 years of marriage on August 14, 2015 in the US.

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

The bench said jurisprudence, as developed by the apex court in such matters, is unequivocal about the "singular right" of the female (wife or former wife) as the case may be, being the sole owner of 'streedhan'.

"It has been held that a husband has no right, and it has to then be necessarily concluded that a father too, has no right when the daughter is alive, well, and entirely capable of making decisions such as pursuing the cause of the recovery of 'stridhan'," Justice Karol, who penned the verdict on behalf of the bench, said.

The court noted that the action was initiated for securing possession of the articles more than 20 years since the date of marriage and five years after the settlement of all marital issues at the time of divorce and that too, not by the complainant's daughter, but by Rao himself.

"This coupled with the fact that there is no authorization on the part of the complainant's daughter in his favour to initiate proceedings for recovery of 'stridhan' exclusively belonging to her, beckons the question on the basis of which the complainant has initiated the present proceedings," it added.

After perusing the material on record, the bench said in view of the facts of this case, there is no iota of proof on record to show that he had entrusted the 'stridhan' of his daughter to her former in-laws, which allegedly was illegally kept by them.

"In view of the above, we also hold that the charge under Section 6 of the Dowry Prohibition Act is not made out and therefore, fails. Consequently, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the proceedings initiated by the complainant against the present appellants (former in-laws) have to be quashed and set aside.

"Any action commenced as a result thereof is bad in law. The questions raised in this appeal are answered accordingly," the bench said in its order.