The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court recently acquitted a Faizabad man and his two relatives of dowry death charges, 35 years after his wife was found dead in a well, stating that the prosecution’s case was riddled with contradictions and never proved that she was harassed for dowry before she died.No allegation of murder or dowry harassment was raised at the time when the incident occurred, the court said. (For Representation)Justice Manoj Bajaj passed the judgment on August 21 on the appeals filed by convicts, challenging the trial court’s judgment. The high court set aside a trial court’s 1996 conviction of Shiv Narain alias Surya Narain, Jai Narayan and Pateshwar under Sections 498-A, 304-B, 201 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code [corresponding to Sections 86, 238 and 61of the BNS, respectively) and ordered their bail and surety bonds discharged.Other co-accused died while their appeals were pending. Urmila, then 21, got married to Shiv Narain in May 1987. On the night of September 19-20, 1991, she went missing from her matrimonial home in Faizabad’s Khurdabad locality. Her body was recovered from a well near the home the next day.Her father Medhi Lal Maurya filed a police complaint only on October 2, 1991, alleging that his daughter had been harassed for dowry and murdered by her husband and in-laws who then dumped her body to destroy evidence.Police registered a case but no charge of murder was ever filed. A trial court convicted the accused in 1996 and sentenced them to up to seven years in prison.The high court found that at the inquest, held the same day the body was recovered, Medhi Lal and his relatives who signed the inquest report stated they believed Urmila had drowned. No allegation of murder or dowry harassment was raised at that point, the court noted.The court held that the 12-day delay in filing a formal complaint was not adequately explained, rejecting the prosecution’s claim that police had pressured the family to stay silent.Section 304-B of the IPC treats a death as a “dowry death” only if a woman is shown to have faced dowry harassment “soon before” her death, a condition that also triggers a legal presumption of guilt against the accused under Section 113-B of the Indian Evidence Act.The court found this was not established. The alleged dowry demand for a scooter was said to have been made once in November 1987. It was not mentioned in the FIR or in statements to police during the investigation, and was raised for the first time when Urmila’s parents testified in court years later, the court noted.The post-mortem report showed a single head injury, which the doctor who conducted it said was consistent with an accidental fall. The court noted there was no evidence to support the theory that Urmila had been murdered.