State of Karnataka v. Basavegowda (1997)

This is the case on a wife's ornaments. The question it settles is one a student will meet in dowry, domestic violence and stridhan questions alike: can a husband say that whatever is in his pocket is lawfully his because he is the husband? The Court's answer is that a wife's personal ornaments are her personal possessions, and taking them from her against her will is a criminal offence committed by her husband.

The accused was the husband of the complainant, married about ten days earlier. On 30 April 1987 he took her to a forest on the pretext of attending a friend's wedding. There he picked up a large stone and threatened to kill her unless she parted with all her ornaments. Finding no other option she removed her jewellery, worth around eleven thousand rupees, and handed it over; he wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

He then assaulted her with the stone and with his fists. She screamed, and when two persons were seen approaching he ran away. She was taken to hospital, where she was an in-patient for seven days with six injuries, the most serious being a fractured rib. The hospital sent a memo to the police, her complaint was recorded, the accused was arrested, and the entire set of ornaments was recovered from his trouser pocket, still wrapped in the handkerchief. Broken glass bangles and the stone were recovered from the scene.

He was charged with attempt to murder and with robbery. The trial judge held her sole testimony insufficient because most of the witnesses had turned hostile, and acquitted him. The State appealed.

The acquittal was reversed in part. Her evidence was accepted; on the charge of attempt to murder the Court held that the acts proved did not go that far, and that at the highest he was liable for causing grievous hurt, one injury having fractured a rib. On the jewellery, the Court held the case fell short of robbery but amounted to extortion, and recorded a conviction on the lesser extortion charge, preferring not to act on the gravest version because the First Information Report disclosed a slightly less serious situation.

1. A wife's ornaments are her own property. The defence argued that a husband is entitled to be found in possession of his wife's ornaments and that such custody never becomes unlawful. The Court accepted that a wife may entrust her ornaments to her husband for safe keeping, and that a careful husband may keep them under his control, and that this by itself is no guilty circumstance. But facts are not considered in a vacuum. Here the ornaments had been made by her father for her wedding, were in her own custody and on her person, and were taken from her under threat. On those facts his possession became unlawful. Ornaments and personal property belonging to a wife necessarily constitute her personal possessions, and divesting a wife of them against her wishes or without her consent clearly brings the case within a criminal offence.

1. Hostile witnesses may point the other way. That most of the witnesses resiled was held not to be coincidence and not to favour the accused: the only beneficiary of such a situation is the accused, so complicity on his part could not be ruled out. The fact that the majority did not support the prosecution militated heavily against him.

1. Test the sole witness against the physical evidence. Her statement was recorded in hospital shortly after the incident and did not depart from the FIR or her later evidence; she was cross-examined at length and her basic evidence remained unshaken. The broken bangles at the scene, the recovery of the stone, the six injuries corresponding to the places she said she was struck, and the recovery of the ornaments from his pocket all corroborated her.

1. Later divorce and remarriage prove nothing. The defence said her subsequent divorce and remarriage showed she had framed him to escape the marriage. Nothing on record suggested she was unhappy at the time of the marriage or wished to marry another. Given the seriousness of what he had done, wanting to end that marriage afterwards was itself a natural consequence, not evidence of fabrication.

1. Answer the argument that he would have killed her had he meant to. That she escaped with injuries did not show no assault occurred: she was a young adult woman who would not easily have submitted to a fatal attack, and she said she avoided the first blow.

1. Intention to kill is judged by the weapon and the injuries. Although she deposed that he threatened to kill her, the Court went strictly by what he actually did; the weapon used and the type of injuries are the crucial factors, and on them the acts did not establish attempted murder.

It opens the property side of violence in the matrimonial home. Use it wherever a question asks about a woman's right to the ornaments given at her marriage, or about the criminal liability of a husband who appropriates them — the finding that his custody becomes unlawful once the ornaments are taken by threat is the operative sentence.

It disposes of the defence that a husband's possession of his wife's jewellery is always lawful, and the argument that a lone injured woman's testimony cannot sustain a conviction when the other witnesses have turned hostile.

It does not decide anything about the civil recovery of stridhan or about proceedings under the dowry and domestic violence statutes; it is a criminal appeal about what the general penal law does with the facts. Nor does it fix any rule about when a threat with a stone amounts to an attempt to murder — that was decided on the injuries in this case alone.