Criminal Miscellaneous Application for pre-arrest bail allowed. The court held that the petitioner, sued by brother's wife, is entitled to bail due to vague allegations, lack of evidence against her, and absence of dowry articles from her possession.
Petitioner granted pre-arrest bail; interim anticipatory bail order made absolute.
This page shows the compact analysis of this judgement. The full analysis — procedural history, issue-by-issue holdings with ratio and obiter, advocates, and paragraph-level evidence for every claim — is being added to the record in batches and will appear here when this judgement has been through it.
Crl. Misc. No.M-13139 of 2012
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IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH
Criminal Misc. No. M-13139 of 2012 (O&M) Date of Decision : July 5th , 2012
Parminder Kaur
.... Petitioner
Versus
State of Punjab
.... Respondent
CORAM : HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE VIJENDER SINGH MALIK
1.Whether Reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment? 2.Whether to be referred to the Reporters or not? 3.Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest?
Present Mr. Rajiv Joshi, Advocate, for the petitioner.
Ms. Sonia Dhillon, AAG, Punjab, for the State.
Mr. Sandeep Arora, Advocate, for the complainant.
VIJENDER SINGH MALIK, J.
Parminder Kaur, the petitioner seeks pre-arrest bail in a case registered by way of FIR No.50 dated 23.4.2012 at Police Station Division No.6, Jalandhar for an offence punishable under sections 307, 323, 498-A, 406 and 506 of Indian Penal Code.
Learned counsel for the petitioner has contended that the petitioner is married sister-in-law of the complainant Gurpreet Kaur alias Nancy. According to him, the only allegation against the petitioner are that she gave beating to the complainant. He has further submitted that the allegation of strangulation of the complainant is however, upon the
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husband of the complainant while the allegation of pouring kerosene on her is on her parents-in-law. He has further submitted that the MLR of the petitioner (Annexure P3) speaks of only two injuries on the person of the complainant and the prosecution has not attributed any injury to the petitioner which may be said to have attracted the provisions of section 307 IPC.
Learned State counsel has submitted, on the other hand, that the medical examination of the complainant was not conducted properly. According to her, a complaint had been made by the complainant in this regard to the Civil Surgeon. She has submitted that the discharge summary shows that the complainant had suffered burn injuries also. According to her, there were seven injuries in all on the complainant.
Learned counsel for the complainant has added to the aforesaid submissions of learned State counsel that the MLR does not take account of the strangulation marks which were there on the front side of neck of the injured. According to him, though, there were seven injuries on the complainant, the MLR only mentions two which shows that the medical examination was not conducted properly.
It is a case where the FIR is very precise. It is evident from the record that the complainant was married with Gurdarshan Singh Mann, brother of the petitioner, on 2.10.2011. The FIR mentions that her fatherin-law and mother-in-law sprinkled kerosene on her, her husband strangulated the complainant and her sister-in-law, the petitioner, gave her a lot of beating. It does not become evident from this narration as to whether all this happened on the same day or on different days with some intervals between them. There is then allegation about demand of
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Innova car and a diamond set. These allegations of demand are couched in a vague language and no specific attribution is there to her husband or any other relations of the husband. It cannot be believed that sprinkling of kerosene, strangulation and beating by the petitioner would have occurred on the same day.
The FIR does not speak of setting the complainant afire. The discharge certificate gives the burn injuries on infra mammary fold to be of 1%. It is difficult to believe that if a person on whom kerosene was poured and was set on fire would suffer only 1% burn injuries and that too on infra mammary fold.
Keeping in view the fact that the petitioner is the married sisterin-law of the complainant and that she has joined the investigation and no recovery of dowry articles is to be effected from her, I find her to be entitled to the relief of pre-arrest bail. The petition is, consequently, allowed and the order dated 7.5.2012 passed by this court granting interim anticipatory bail to the petitioner is made absolute.
(VIJENDER SINGH MALIK) JUDGE
July 5th , 2012 som
2 issues framed by the court
Whether the petitioner is entitled to pre-arrest bail in a case involving allegations of dowry harassment and violence.
Whether the vague nature of allegations and lack of specific attribution to the petitioner justify grant of bail.
Parminder Kaur
State of Punjab
VIJENDER SINGH MALIK
As recorded by the court registry
Judgements on the same questions, provisions and authorities, from every court
