SC scraps district panels for dowry harassment cases

Supreme Court rolls back dilution of law, but says investigators should be trained to deal with such cases

NEWDELHI: A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Friday revised a 2017 judgment by a two-judge bench of the apex court that sought to prevent misuse of an anti-dowry law by forming a family welfare committee at the district level to look into complaints before arrests were made, and said the creation of such a panel is beyond the scope of the law.

The ruling puts the onus for the use and possible misuse of section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) on law enforcement agencies.

The previous order, passed in the Rajesh Kumar vs Union of India case, was seen by some as diluting the law. The case itself was prompted by the premise that section 498A was sometimes being misused to settle scores.

Setting aside the direction to form a committee, the bench, headed by chief justice of India Dipak Misra, said on Friday that while the law was well-intentioned, investigating and law enforcement agencies were sometimes over zealous in its application: “The prescription of duties of the Committees and further action therefore, as we

find, are beyond the Code and the same does not really flow from any provision of the Code.”

“There can be no denial that there has to be just, fair and reasonable working of a provision. The legislature in its wisdom has made the offence under Section 498-A IPC cognizable and nonbailable. The fault lies with the investigating agency which sometimes jumps into action without application of mind,” the court said.

A bench of two judges — justices AK Goel (since retired) and UU Lalit — had on July 27, 2017, ordered constitution of one or more family welfare committees by the District Legal Services

Authorities comprising three members. This was one of the guidelines the top court had issued in the view of the arguments made that the dowry harassment law was subject to rampant misuse. The committee was empowered to interact with parties personally and police were asked not to arrest until a report was received from the panel on the veracity of the complaint.

According to senior advocate Gynant Singh, the changes do not take away “the right of men to invoke various remedies against false and motivated complaints, and even to preempt arrest in such cases”.