UP man kills pregnant wife over dowry, claims Covid death; sentenced to 10 years’ RI

AGRA: A 30-year-old cloth trader was sentenced to 10 years rigorous imprisonment by a court in Muzaffarnagar on Tuesday for murdering his seven-month pregnant wife during Covid-19 pandemic over dowry and falsely claiming she died of coronavirus in 2020.Convict AS Mohamed buried his 25-year-old wife, Tabassum, on June 5, 2020, without a postmortem. He misled her family by citing Covid-19 as the cause of death. However, a few days later, the body was exhumed following a police complaint by Tabassum's uncle, Murtaja Ahmed, alleging that his niece was murdered over dowry demands.A postmortem thereafter confirmed that Tabassum was "strangled to death", and an FIR was registered against her husband and three other family members.

All of them were arrested and sent to jail. A few months later, they came out on bail.Additional district govt counsel Amit Tyagi said, "Tabassum's uncle, Murtaja Ahmed, went to her in-laws' place in Shikarpur village under Bhorakalan thana in Muzaffarnagar, where he found his niece lying dead on the bed. The body had some injury marks, but he was told that she died of coronavirus. Tabassum was buried right away."Three days later, Ahmed, in his police complaint, stated that Tabassum, a resident of Begrajpur in Muzaffarnagar, got married to AS Mohamed five years ago.

Since then, her husband and his family used to regularly harass her for an extra Rs 2 lakh apart from the dowry given during her wedding.Police initiated an investigation and registered a case against the victim's husband, her mother-in-law Shameem, 55, brother-in-law Mohamed Insaf, 28, and husband's aunt Shabarin, 50, under IPC sections 498-A (subjecting a woman to cruelty), 304-B (dowry death), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 201 (culpable homicide), 316 (causing death of a quick unborn child by an act that would be considered culpable homicide) along with 3/4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act.

A chargesheet was filed following a thorough probe.Going by the evidence presented by police, the court of additional district judge Nishant Singla convicted Tabassum's husband on Tuesday, and sent him to 10 years in jail along with a fine of Rs 56,000. AS Mohamed's aunt died during the course of trial, while his mother and brother were acquitted due to "lack of evidence".