A fractured hyoid bone, a false seizure story: Supreme Court upholds life term for husband in 1996 dowry death
Justice Sandeep Mehta and Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya uphold the Bombay High Court reversal of a murder acquittal, holding that a false defence and the Section 106 burden completed the chain.
The Supreme Court on 2 November 2026 upheld the life sentence of a man convicted of murdering his wife nine months after their wedding. It also confirmed the dowry-death convictions of the husband and his brother.
A bench of Justice Sandeep Mehta and Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya dismissed two criminal appeals against a Bombay High Court judgment of 3 July 2013. The High Court had reversed the trial court’s acquittal of the husband on the murder charge.
The judgment, written by Justice Mehta, is marked non-reportable. The Court cancelled the bail the appellants had enjoyed during the appeals and gave them four weeks to surrender.
Nine months of marriage
Ramkishan Digambar Jadhav married Vimalbai on 12 May 1995. The prosecution said she was harassed and tortured soon afterwards over demands for a television set, a tape deck, a plot of land in the MIDC area and Rs 50,000 in cash, so that he could find employment.
She died at the matrimonial home on 1 February 1996, within nine months of the wedding. Her brother Narayan, the first informant (PW-2), said she complained during visits home of beatings, starvation and unrelenting humiliation.
On one occasion, he said, she was strung with a rope and hung in a well with a threat that she would be killed if the demands were not met. She had been brought home for Sankrant on 12 January 1996 and again complained.
Two versions of one night
At about 1 a.m. on 1 February 1996, the husband told Narayan that Vimalbai was having convulsions and was being taken to Naigaon for treatment. Narayan, with his parents, brother and villagers, followed in a jeep.
Near a farmer’s field they met a bullock cart with Vimalbai lying lifeless, blood oozing from her nostrils and the fingers of her right hand. Doctors at Naigaon Hospital declared her brought dead.
Narayan lodged an oral complaint, recorded by Police Sub-Inspector Anwar Khan (PW-7), and Crime No. 11 of 1996 was registered under Sections 302, 498-A and 34 of the Indian Penal Code.
The husband had been to the police station first. At 8 a.m. he presented an application saying his wife died accidentally. She had felt sudden giddiness during intimacy, her jaws locked and she passed away, he said.
The police made an entry in the Accidental Death Register and drew up an inquest panchnama. Two medical officers at Rural Hospital Naigaon then conducted the post-mortem and gave the cause of death as asphyxia due to throttling.
Acquittal on murder, reversed on appeal
Six people were charged under Sections 498-A and 302 read with Section 34, and a charge under Section 304-B read with Section 34 was added later. The Additional Sessions Judge, Biloli, convicted the husband, his father Digambar and his brother Venkat of Sections 498-A and 304-B on 21 September 1998.
Each received one year’s rigorous imprisonment and Rs 500 fine under Section 498-A, and seven years under Section 304-B, to run concurrently. All six were acquitted of murder, and the husband’s mother, sister and sister-in-law were cleared of every charge.
Both sides appealed. The High Court dismissed the convicts’ appeal and partly allowed the State’s, holding the husband’s acquittal for murder perverse and a total failure of justice.
It convicted him under Section 302 and sentenced him to life imprisonment with a Rs 5,000 fine. The acquittal of the others on the murder charge stood, and Digambar died during the appeal in this Court, which abated against him.
What each side argued
Counsel for the appellants said the case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence and the prosecution had not proved a complete, unbroken chain pointing unerringly to guilt. The husband’s counsel repeated that Vimalbai died accidentally in a sudden epileptic seizure.
For Digambar and Venkat, counsel said they were roped in only because of their relationship with the husband, with no specific act attributed to them. Since the mother-in-law, sister-in-law and co-sister were acquitted on the same evidence, they sought acquittal on parity.
The State said she died an unnatural, homicidal death within nine months of marriage, in the exclusive company of her husband. By Section 106 of the Evidence Act, it argued, a heavy burden lay on him to explain how she came to be strangled.
It called his seizure story demonstrably false and a link that strengthened the case against him. It also relied on the post-mortem finding of throttling and on the Section 113-B presumption, since cruelty in connection with dowry demands preceded the death.
The post-mortem against the seizure story
The bench called it undisputed that none of the accused denied being in the house. The husband, indeed, took the positive stance that he was with his wife when she suffered a seizure, and lodged a report to that effect.
Dr Shyam Nagapurkar (PW-1), who performed the post-mortem with Dr Gunturkar (DW-3), found multiple injuries. They included subcutaneous haemorrhage over the laryngeal area, bruises over the thyroid cartilages and a fracture of the left cornua of the hyoid bone. His opinion was asphyxia due to throttling.
The doctor denied the seizure suggestion. There was no lock-jaw or displacement of the tongue, he said, and the internal neck injuries could not be caused by an epileptic fit.
The Supreme Court called the defence patently false, as the trial court and High Court had found.
Section 106 and a false defence
Because Vimalbai was in her husband’s exclusive company at home when she died unnaturally, the Court said, Section 106 of the Evidence Act cast a statutory burden on him. He had to offer a:
“cogent, credible, and satisfactory explanation” (para 38)
He gave a defence that the medical evidence categorically excluded. The Court set out two paragraphs of Trimukh Maroti Kirkan v. State of Maharashtra, (2006) 10 SCC 681, on offences committed in the privacy of a home.
That decision, it recalled, says the prosecution’s burden in such cases is comparatively lighter, with a corresponding burden on the inmates of the house to explain how the crime happened. They cannot get away by keeping quiet on the premise that the whole burden lies on the prosecution.
Applying it, the bench held that his failure to explain, together with a false defence, supplied an:
“additional incriminating link that completes the chain of circumstantial evidence” (para 40)
That established his guilt for murder under Section 302 beyond reasonable doubt.
Dowry death: the demands and the witnesses
With the murder charge proved, the Court held that the ingredients of Section 498-A and Section 304-B read with Section 34 were also made out. The death was within about nine months of marriage, well inside the seven years in Section 304-B.
It found clear, consistent and mutually corroborative evidence of physical cruelty, mental torture and starvation over unlawful demands. These were Rs 50,000 in cash to secure the husband a job, a television set, a tape deck, and transfer of a plot in the MIDC area at village Ghungrala.
Narayan had testified to the beatings, the starvation and the incident in which his sister was tied with a rope and lowered into a well. His account was corroborated by Sambhaji Turatwad (PW-3), the mediator in the marriage, and by Ramrao (PW-4), her father.
Two independent neighbours of her parents’ home, Vaijnath Sambhaji Marpatwar (PW-5) and Mahajan Munjaji Yembalwad (PW-6), also supported the account of ongoing harassment over unmet demands.
The appellants, the bench concluded, had failed to rebut the presumption under Section 113-B of the Evidence Act and were rightly convicted by the courts below.
Order
The Court found no reason to interfere with the High Court judgment of 3 July 2013. Criminal Appeal No. 1849 of 2013 and Criminal Appeal No. 962 of 2014 are dismissed as devoid of merit.
The appellants, who had been on bail during the appeals, must surrender before the trial court within four weeks to serve the rest of their sentences. If they do not, the trial court is to take all necessary steps, including non-bailable warrants, to take them into custody.