New Delhi The Delhi High Court has denied bail to a woman accused of harassing her 19-year-old daughter-in-law for dowry and abetting her suicide within eight months of marriage, saying that a “young life” was lost under tragic circumstances.HC observed that the case reflects a disturbing social reality where young women are allegedly driven to take their own lives due to their parents’ inability to meet dowry demands. (Representative photo)A bench of Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma in her verdict released on Tuesday, observed that the case reflects a disturbing social reality where young women are allegedly driven to take their own lives due to their parents’ inability to meet dowry demands.“The present case reflects a disturbing reality of society where, even today, a young girl aged about 19 years is alleged to have been driven to commit suicide because her parents were unable to fulfil an unlawful demand of ₹3 lakhs allegedly raised by her in-laws, including the present applicant, merely on account of her marriage into their family. The seriousness of the allegations is further aggravated by the fact that the marriage was only about eight months old at the time of the incident and that the deceased was allegedly subjected to continuous harassment during this brief period of matrimonial life,” the court said in the order delivered on Monday.On granting bail at this stage, it said, “This court is of the opinion that a young life has been lost under tragic circumstances. The material collected during the investigation, including an audio conversation between the deceased and her brother wherein she is heard crying and narrating the incident of being threatened with being paraded naked, when read together with the allegations of persistent harassment on account of non-fulfilment of dowry demands, lends seriousness to the allegations levelled against the applicant.”The verdict comes at a time when the death of 32-year-old actor-model Twisha Sharma at her marital home in Madhya Pradesh, barely five months after her marriage, has drawn national attention amid allegations of delay in registering the FIR, inconsistencies in the initial post-mortem examination, questions over the handling of CCTV footage and claims of influence over the investigation.In the present case, the mother-in-law approached the court seeking bail in the case involving charges of dowry death and cruelty in connection with dowry demand.The FIR was registered after the victim’s father-in-law informed police that his daughter-in-law had died by suicide by hanging.Her father, however, alleged that his son-in-law and the deceased’s in-laws had persistently demanded additional dowry and subjected her to physical and mental harassment.During the investigation, the complainant also produced an audio recording in which the deceased is allegedly heard telling her brother that her husband, a co-accused in the case, had abused and threatened her.In her bail plea before the HC, the mother-in-law argued that an audio recording made about an hour before the incident showed the deceased was distressed over a quarrel with her husband linked to an Instagram chat with another girl, and not due to any alleged dowry demand. She also claimed that she was neither present during the quarrel nor during the alleged suicide.Opposing the plea, Delhi Police described the allegations as grave and contended that the woman, being the deceased’s mother-in-law, was a principal accused in the case, particularly as the deceased’s husband was a minor and allegedly acted under the influence of his parents, including the woman.To be sure, as per law, the marriage between minors is not void but voidable, at the option of the minor party and such marriages as sufficient to attract criminal liability under dowry and cruelty provisions unless the marriage had already been legally declared void.