Supreme Court to deliver verdict regarding immediate arrest for dowry harassment

The Supreme Court on Friday will deliver a verdict on petitions filed regarding immediate arrest of an individual booked under Section 498A i.e. the dowry harassment case.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra, Justice AM Khanwilkar, and Justice DY Chandrachud will hear the verdict at 10.30 am today.

The court will decide whether the husband and his relative should be immediately arrested after a woman files a complaint against them.

In July 2017, an SC bench had said that in order to prevent ‘the misuse’ of Section 498A, arrest of every individual without a preliminary inquiry is not possible.

The court had called for the formation of a three-member committee in every district that would oversee such cases. Only if the committee saw reason in the complaint, then the husband and his relatives involved in dowry harassment would be arrested.

This order, however, was challenged and the new petition filed in the apex court said that the SC had the right to amend the law. “The purpose of the law is to provide justice to women, but due to the Supreme Court's decision, arrests have been stopped in cases of dowry harassment across the country,” the petition argued.

In November 2017, the apex court had said that it could not prepare fresh guidelines as it was beyond legal provisions. The court had at the time said that it will first review the judgment given by the bench of two judges in which the judges had ordered to prepare some guidelines for investigating the cases related to dowry matters.

In April this year, the Supreme Court reserved judgement on a batch of pleas seeking to review its July 2017 order that diluted the provisions of the anti-dowry law by preventing immediate arrests, with Dipak Misra, the Chief Justice of India observing that dowry has a "chilling effect" on marriage.

To prevent the misuse of anti-dowry laws, on July 27 last year, the bench of Justices Goel and Lalit had put an end to immediate arrests in dowry cases and then directed the District Legal Services Authorities (DLSA) to constitute a three-member welfare committee which would examine complaints before arrests are made.

"We will only see whether the order was passed to fill gaps in the law; whether such an order was permissible under Article 142; and whether that order takes out the spirit of Section 498A," Chief Justice Misra observed.

"Section 498A (dowry harassment) of IPC protects gender justice and rights. There should not be any kind of cruel treatment of women... But the liberty of husbands is also a factor... Whether both can be juxtaposed or reconciled?" Chief Justice Misra said.

Misra was responding to submissions made by the Centre which said the order was not "practical". Representing the Centre, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) PS Narasimha added that the states had written to the Centre expressing their difficulty in setting of family welfare committees and added that monitoring them were not "implementable".

However, representing women who challenged the order, senior advocate Indira Jaising said the court should lay down directions only if there was a vacuum in law.