Report 202 – Proposal to amend Section 304-B IPC Dowry ... - Jeywin

12
1.6 Question in issue.
If all the four conditions stated above are present
in a given case, then the husband or the relative concerned shall
be deemed to have caused her death and such death will be
called dowry death. The traditional criminal law dictum that an
accused is presumed to be innocent unless proved guilty of the
offence he is charged with, is not applicable on account of the
legal fiction embodied in the provisions of Section 304B
whereby he is deemed to have caused the death and the onus
shifts on him to prove otherwise. Where there is evidence that
the accused committed the murder of woman in terms of
Section 300 defining the offence of murder, he will be charged
with the commission of the offence of murder and liable to be
proceeded against accordingly. If the conditions of Section
304B or, for that matter, any other section of the Penal Code are
present in such a case, the accused will be charged with the
commission of that offence also. The presence of such
conditions pertaining to any other offence will not take out the
case from the ambit of Section 300 dealing with the offence of
murder. In view of the aforesaid, the Commission will consider
in the succeeding chapters as to whether there is any warrant
for appending capital punishment to Section 304B, for the
reason that the offence of dowry deaths are highly despicable
and shocks the conscience of the society.