NEW DELHI: Terming dowry as the worst social evil, Supreme Court said on Friday that courts should not show any leniency in granting bail in dowry death cases as it would not only erode public confidence in the justice delivery system but also embolden the perpetrators. It quashed the Allahabad high court order granting bail to a man accused of killing his wife within four months of their marriage after his demand for a Fortuner car was not fulfilled.A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and R Mahadevan held that HC wrongly applied the principle of ‘bail is rule and jail is the exception’ without considering the severity of the offence allegedly committed by the man.”This court is constrained to observe that judicial passivity or misplaced leniency in the face of such atrocities would only embolden perpetrators and undermine public confidence in the administration of justice. A firm and deterrent judicial response is, therefore, imperative – not only to uphold the majesty of law and do justice in the present case, but also to send an unequivocal message that neither law nor society will countenance barbarities born out of the evil of dowry,” the bench said.It said permitting alleged prime perpetrators of such heinous crimes to remain at liberty on bail, when evidence indicates active infliction of physical as well as mental cruelty, may not only jeopardise fairness of the trial but also erode public faith in the administration of criminal justice. The bench said it cannot lose sight of the fact that marriage, in its true essence, is a sacred and noble institution founded on mutual trust, companionship and respect, but this pious bond has regrettably been reduced to a mere commercial transaction. “The evil of dowry, though often sought to be camouflaged as gifts or voluntary offerings, has in reality become a means to display social status and to satiate material greed,” it said.”The social evil of dowry not only corrodes the sanctity of marriage, but also perpetuates systemic oppression and subjugation of women. When such demands transgress the bounds of reason and culminate in cruelty – or worse, in the untimely death of a young bride – the offence transcends the private sphere of the family and assumes the character of a grave social crime. It ceases to remain a mere personal tragedy and becomes an affront to the collective conscience of society,” it said.”The phenomenon of dowry deaths represents one of the most abhorrent manifestations of this social malaise, where the life of a young woman is extinguished within her matrimonial home – not for any fault of her own, but solely to satisfy the insatiable greed of others. Such heinous offences strike at the very root of human dignity and violate the constitutional guarantees of equality and life with dignity under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. They corrode the moral fibre of the community, normalise violence against women, and erode the foundations of a civilised society,” it said.
