One P Veerabhadra Rao’s daughter was married in Dec 1999 and the couple migrated to the US.After 16 years of marriage, the daughter filed for divorce. A Louis county circuit court in Missouri granted divorce by mutual consent in Feb 2016. All possessions, material and financial, were settled between the parties through a separation agreement. She remarried in May 2018.
Three years later, Rao filed an FIR against his daughter’s erstwhile in-laws in Hyderabad seeking return of her ‘streedhan’.
The erstwhile in-laws unsuccessfully moved Telangana HC for quashing of the FIR. Then they appealed against the HC order in the SC.
A bench of Justices J K Maheshwari and Sanjay Karol quashed the case against the in-laws and said the father had no locus standi to seek return of his daughter’s ‘streedhan’ as that belonged solely to her.
“The generally accepted rule, which has been judicially recognised, is that the woman exercises an absolute right over the property,” said Justice Karol, writing the judgment.
“The jurisprudence, as has been developed by this court, is unequivocal with respect to the singular right of the female (wife or former wife as the case may be) being the sole owner of ‘streedhan’. A husband has no right, and it must then be necessarily concluded that a father, too, has no right when the daughter is alive, well and entirely capable of making decisions such as pursuing the cause of the recovery of her ‘streedhan’,” the bench said. “The object of criminal proceedings is to bring a wrongdoer to justice, and it is not a means to get revenge or seek vendetta against persons with whom the complainant may have a grudge,” it added. One more aspect which went against the father was that he initiated criminal proceedings for recovery of ‘streedhan’ after more than two decades of marriage, five years after its dissolution, and three years after his daughter’s remarriage.
Justice Karol said another crucial element against the father’s claim was that he was not authorised by his daughter to initiate action for recovery of her ‘streedhan’. The court also found that the father had provided no proof of any ‘streedhan’ being given to his daughter at the time of her marriage in 1999 and that the parties to matrimony had never raised the issue of ‘streedhan’ in their separation settlement of 2016. “There is no evidence to suggest that the claimed ‘streedhan’ was in the possession of the daughter’s in-laws,” the SC said.
