The court acquitted a man of complicity in his wife’s suicide | Mumbai News

MUMBAI: A Dindoshi court has acquitted a 25-year-old builder from Kandivali, who was accused of abetting his wife’s suicide by physically and mentally harassing her. The court acquitted him for lack of evidence.

The complaint was filed at the Kandivali police station by the father of the deceased woman, who arranged his daughter’s marriage to the accused Govind Gurkha in 2011. On the morning of August 5, 2013, he received a call from his daughter around 6:00 pm when she told him that her husband was beating her. At midnight he received a call that his daughter had set herself on fire due to harassment from her husband.

The couple, natives of Andhra Pradesh, came to Mumbai a few years after their wedding for construction work. They lived at a construction site in Kandivali where the incident took place.

The defense argued that the accused’s father-in-law falsely accused him in the case because his wife wanted to marry someone else. The defense argued that because her father refused the marriage, she committed suicide.

The victim’s father said in court that his daughter told him over the phone that Gurkha beat her regularly, constantly drinks and does not bring home any food. According to the father, on the night of her death, Basappa’s brother called him and informed him that his daughter had died due to burns in a fire.

The court noted that the father of the deceased did not visit her matrimonial home before her death. He also never visited her in Bombay, the court said, adding that the father had not filed a single complaint regarding the stalking allegations.

“There is no evidence that the accused committed any deliberate act with the deceased which forced her to commit suicide or caused her grievous bodily harm,” Additional Sessions Judge Ashwini Lokhande said in a detailed order passed on October 19.

Having considered the case, the court said: “The prosecutor’s office miserably failed to prove the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt. Therefore, the accused deserves to be acquitted.”