5. Conclusion. Article 14 of the Constitution of India "Equality before Law" sanctions:

"The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India".³⁴

The Equality article is said to be the basis of the law of property and inheritance. However, this is not followed. In India, the official number of dowry deaths -- or a certain kind of property homicides -- were 5,817 in 1993 and 5,199 in 1994, according to the Home Ministry of India. Unofficial reports amount a total of 12,000-15,000 dowry murders every year in India.

The famous Supreme Court decision by Justices S. Murtaza Fazal Ali, S. Mukharji and A. V. Varadrajan (the last gave a dissenting judgement) noted that

"neither the husband, nor the son, not the father nor the brother, has power to use or to alienate the legal property of a woman. And if any of them consume such property against her own consent he shall be compelled to pay its value with interest to her...".

This judgement regarded appropriation of stridhan by a husband or his family as a criminal offense and strongly negated earlier judgements by the Punjab and Haryana Court that under Hindu marriage Act of 1955 and the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 stridhan becomes joint property of both husband and wife, after a woman enters the matrimonial home. The wife may entrust the husband to keep her property but he would be deemed "guilty of criminal breach of trust" if he misappropriates and then refuses to return the property to the wife with interests. The Supreme Court has brought the guilty husband's action under the definition of "Criminal Breach of Trust" (Section 405 of the Indian Penal Code) and declared the guilty person to be punished under Section 406 of the Indian Penal Code.

The Advocate Rani Jethmalani, one of the most authoritative voices on Indian women rights, wants the Anglo-American concept of "community of property" to be introduced. This concept would bring all assests of husband and wife to be equally divided between them after a broken marriage. According to her, dowry is not only a form of violence, but a human rights abuse.³⁵

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