The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has held that direct evidence linking a husband or his relatives to a woman’s death is not necessary to establish dowry death when the statutory requirements are fulfilled. The court said the presumption applies if the woman dies unnaturally within seven years of marriage and evidence shows she was subjected to dowry-related cruelty or harassment.

The observation came as a division bench of Justice Abdul Moin and Justice Pramod Kumar Srivastava decided an appeal filed by Sandeep Singh Hora. The bench upheld Hora’s conviction in connection with his wife’s death but reduced his life sentence to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. The verdict on the appeal was pronounced on Friday.

Hora’s wife died in 2010 at their matrimonial home in an area under Lucknow’s Talkatora Police Station. A trial court subsequently convicted him of dowry death and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Challenging the ruling before the High Court, Hora sought relief against the conviction and the punishment imposed upon him.

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The High Court noted that the woman had died an unnatural death in her matrimonial home and that dowry-related cruelty had been established during the trial. It said Section 304-B of the Indian Penal Code creates a presumption of dowry death once its essential conditions are satisfied. Therefore, the absence of direct evidence connecting the accused with the death would not, by itself, invalidate the prosecution’s case.

However, the bench found that the trial court had not provided sufficient reasons for awarding the maximum punishment of life imprisonment. It said the lower court failed to properly balance the aggravating and mitigating circumstances while determining the sentence. Referring to Supreme Court rulings, the bench observed that life imprisonment under Section 304-B should be reserved for rare cases and held that Hora’s case did not fall within that category.

The court considered Hora’s age, the time elapsed since the incident and his period in custody. It noted that he had completed six years, four months and 19 days of actual imprisonment, or seven years, five months and 21 days with remission, and that no adverse report about his conduct or antecedents had been submitted. The sentence already served will be adjusted against the revised term, while his other convictions under the IPC and Dowry Prohibition Act remain unchanged.

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