Man gets 10-year RI for wife’s death over dowry

New Delhi: Sentencing a man to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment for the dowry death of his wife in 2014, a court said his “rapacious conduct and the intense desire to have money” from the woman’s family and the harassment meted out to her led “the innocent lady to give up her life just within three months of her marriage”.Underscoring the wider social impact of such crimes, additional sessions judge Shunali Gupta observed, “This offence of dowry death is not an offence only against the individual or her family but an offence to society as parents of every girl remain under fear of the atrocities of in-laws, including husband, if they are unable to meet up their expectations, rather insatiable greed, for dowry.”The court convicted Prashant Kumar Sinha, accepting the prosecution’s claim that he had subjected Dr Rekha to cruelty over demands for a Volkswagen car and Rs 50 lakh. Married on Dec 12, 2013, Rekha died of aluminium phosphide poisoning on March 6, 2014.Witnesses also alleged a pattern of suspicious deaths linked to the accused’s family, including the death of his second wife in 2022. The conviction was, however, based on the evidence directly related to Rekha’s death.