A special immediate mid night hearing was conducted by court in Bhubaneshwar on Thursday. The court gave the verdict and decided to send the Major arrested in a dowry harassment case to military custody instead of jail. The sub-divisional Judicial Magistrate SK Mishra reached the court at 10 pm after the hearing failed through video conference. The hearing in this case continued till late one and a half hours.
After the hearing, the judge ordered that the arrested Major will be sent to military custody instead of jail. Earlier, Major was arrested on charges of physical and mental harassment of wife for dowry and attempted murder.
A case has been registered against the Army officer under various sections of the Dowry Prevention Act and IPC at the police station. The officer was accused of threatening his wife that if she did not bring the money from her parents, he would shoot her. The officer’s wife complained that the matter was settled by mutual consent, but her husband continued to harass her. The police gave notice to the Major, but he did not respond. The police arrested Major on Thursday.
According to Indian National Crime Record Bureau, dowry issues cause 1.4 deaths per year per 100,000 women in India. NCRB report on criminals also states that people with educational background are serving term behind bars for committing crime of dowry.
Perpetrators mostly either extended family or husband use other methods of coercion, including starvation, deprivation of clothing, evictions but largest of all is physical abuse of the victim. Few of them are also murdered or the victim commits suicide to end the pain. Indian National Crime Records Bureau reported 7,621 “dowry deaths” in 2016. While this represents a decrease from the 8,455 deaths officially reported in 2014, it still amounts to approximately 20 deaths per day.